To make a long story short, I went before the people on TV and told the whole story. Charlie had the TV Techs mock up a scene of what it would look like and we had models posed in family scenes and the like. Should have gone over like a shot—and it would have, except for this screwball Hatty Dakkon.
It wasn't an hour after I had made my broadcast that my secretary announced this Mrs. Hatty Dakkon. She proved to be a young matron type with pretty good legs and a chip on her shoulder. She was against roofing Central Park.
Well, you boys know how it goes. Always some crank who doesn't like things changed, and after they have blown off steam, they quiet down and you can go ahead and do the work.
So I let this Hatty Dakkon talk on and on until my ears were limp from listening.
She said she was against roofing Central Park because it would be just like every other place in the City—weatherproof, air-conditioned and humidity controlled.
She figured that children should have some place where they could feel the wind on their faces and the falling of rain and snow and the smell of air as it was in nature.
She said that was the only way most of our children could ever, ever find the ties with the past that were sacred.
She quoted poetry about the wind and the rain in your hair, and on and on and on.
Finally I let her talk off her head of steam and she got calmed down so I could tell her: "Thank you, madam, for this expression of your opinion. You can rest assured that I will do everything within my power and the power of the Civic Machine to see to it that anything possible is done."