Gary Christian helps build a bridge to the past

Gary Christian, armed with only a plan and a strong will to see his ideas through to fruition, spearheaded efforts to establish two projects that have become fixtures of Sedalia parks.

Christian, with the assistance of some of his classmates from the Smith-Cotton graduating class of 1959, led efforts to build the covered bridge at Centennial Park and stock trout at the Liberty Park Pond.

Christian grew up on the east side of Sedalia and later moved to Pennsylvania. When he returned to Sedalia about 10 years ago to help care for his aging parents, he recalled the good times he had as a child playing near the covered bridge in Centennial Park, which had burned in a fire in the late 1960s.

“That bridge was nostalgic for a lot of the kids who grew up on the east side,” Christian said.

Although the restoration project appeared beyond hope when the Conservation Department nixed a proposal to restore the bridge at its original site, Christian and his old classmates did not give up. They revised their plans and began devising fundraising opportunities to raise $60,000 for the bridge and walkway.

Soon, graduates from Smith-Cotton classes of 1960 and 1962 joined the effort. They sold more than 1,200 bricks that now make up the walkway at the west end of the covered bridge to cover the expenses, and built the new bridge in nine months solely through the help of local volunteers.

“There was only a couple kids ... that helped us build it. The rest of it was pretty much people between 60 and 70 years of age, and we would be out there every morning doing our thing. We had a good time at it,” Christian said.

“It was a good project to bring the city together and wrap our arms around a little nostalgia, and have some fun at it too.”

Sedalia Parks Director Mark Hewett said people of Christian’s generation had many memories of the old bridge.

Since its restoration, he said he has often seen people walking through the bridge and looking for their names on the bricks they purchased to help fund the project.

“It really took a lot more work than everybody would think,” Hewett said.

Weddings, car shows and other events have since centered their festivities around the new covered bridge, which still contains one of the original beams from the bridge burned in the 1960s.

While others may have been content completing one community project, Christian — who joked that he never had plans to become a couch potato — moved immediately on to his next idea: stocking trout at the pond in Liberty Park.

Christian had grown accustomed to trout being stocked in local parks back when he lived in Pennsylvania, and wanted an alternative to driving to Bennett Springs for local fishing enthusiasts.

Christian met with Hewett and a representative from the Conservation Department to discuss the plan. Soon, he established the Liberty Park Trout Association and the project received government support needed to move forward.

Hewett said stocking trout at Liberty Park Pond has been a boon for the parks department and the community as a whole. Along with keeping visitors coming to the parks throughout the winter months, Hewett said the trout-stocked pond also helps draw people from other communities to Sedalia and curbs vandalism.

Having a leader in the community who is committed to seeing their ideas through to completion is a vital component of projects like these, Hewett said.

“We have so many things going on, so I have to rely on people like that to carry the ball so to speak,” Hewett said. “These two projects were really big in getting people involved and created local activities for local people.”

Christian credited his former classmates and other members of the community for making these projects possible. He said he just had the idea and the will, but so many residents contributed their time and effort to help get the concepts off the ground.

“With both of these projects, it was amazing how people came together to help,” said Bonnie Christian, Gary’s wife. “It shows what ordinary, common people can do.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s always a way,” Gary Christian said.