After 16 years of trying to get a city of Kent facility named after former mayor Isabel Hogan, Alex Jones finally got his wish.
The Kent City Council approved a resolution last week to rename Russell Road Park as Hogan Park at Russell Road to honor the city’s first female mayor and her impact on parks and arts. Hogan served as mayor from 1970-86.
“I’ve been working on this for 16 years and was about ready to give up,” said Jones, a retired city employee, at the Sept. 16 council meeting. “I didn’t think it was going to happen in my lifetime. I am overwhelmed that it has. I worked for the city of Kent for 31 years.
“She did so much. All of the employees that worked for the city under her, we respected her so much we started to call her, ‘Mom.'”
Council President Dana Ralph praised the work of Hogan, 93, who lives on Scenic Hill.
“I just want to say how proud I am to be able to vote on this resolution,” Ralph said. “Mayor Hogan made this community what it is today. In her vision to the future knowing that quality of life depends on a lot of things and one of those is public recreation and another is public art.
“She was instrumental in a lot of things we in this city take for granted today whether it’s Earthworks Park, our arts commission and money going to all of these things to make Kent a very livable community.”
City Parks Director Jeff Watling said Russell Road Park, 24400 Russell Road, is a good fit to be named after Hogan.
“Russell Road Park is certainly one of our signature athletic complexes,” Watling said. “It’s a facility that was built and initial construction started during Mayor Hogan’s term. We feel it’s very suitable for this honor.”
Hogan, who was born in Kansas, moved in 1950 to Kent. She was married to Dr. James D. Hogan, who died in 1967. They had six children.
Jones led the push to rename the park, but others in the community and on city staff also supported the change to honor Hogan.
“For many of those years she really pursued with a passion the parks, recreation, the arts and furthering those efforts in this community,” Watling said. “A lot of our livability that we have in this community is thanks to her leadership.”
Watling said city officials decided to keep Russell Road in the name as well.
“We think that name both gives great honor and recognition to the work of Mayor Hogan but also gives historical reference to the park’s name as Russell Road Park,” Watling said.
Councilwoman Brenda Fincher said the park has special memories for her.
“As a resident of the West Hill and a longtime resident of Kent spending a lot of those years in the valley, I spent a lot of time at Russell Road Park playing softball and my kids played softball and baseball there,” Fincher said.
Jones loved every minute of working under Hogan’s leadership.
“If we were coming through the city on a weekend and saw something wrong like a pothole in the street or something, we stopped and didn’t care where we were going whether to church or to see family, we took care of it and didn’t charge the city nothing,” Jones said. “We did it for Miss Hogan.
“We worked hard to make her look good, we didn’t care about ourselves. As long as we made her look good she wouldn’t get on our back.”
Park renaming
• Hogan Park at Russell Road: Kent will officially rename the park at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 4, with Isabel Hogan scheduled to be present.
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