Subverting the past?

 

Saco Rienk De Boer

This bust of S.R. De Boer has been in the Waring House of Denver Botanic Gardens since I began working at the institution. I was told it was of De Boer--who was perhaps more responsible for the creation of Denver Botanic Gardens than any other individual. 

There is a park in South Central Denver named for him very near to where the house he lived in still stands. This is a schematic rendering:

There has been a proposal to rename this park due to S.R. De Boer co-authoring Denver's first Zoning ordinances which are claimed to have set the stage for red-lining (a practice that arose decades after De  Boer co-drafted the ordinances). I do not believe that De Boer's intentions were racist: he believed all people should have access to the single family bungalows he championed.

Why or how De Boer should be held responsible for phenomena that only came about decades AFTER his drafting Denver's codes is a mystery to me. The impact of this inquisition is not however.

Click here to access the City of Denver discussion of the renaming process and issue.

Have you seen Oppenheimer yet? This film is strangely relevant to De Boer's case on many levels....

Albert Einstein is an important character in the movie: his theory of relativity laid the groundwork that ultimately led to the atom bomb. He wrote Franklin Delano Roosevelt a letter in 1939 informing Roosvelt that the Germans were likely working on a bomb harnessing atomic power, and urging him to make it a priority to have the USA do so first--which ultimately transpired. Was Einstein responsible for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and their devastation? Was Oppenheimer?

I was a youngster when Robert Oppenheimer's brother, Frank (also a character in the movie), was hired at the University of Colorado in Boulder as a Physics professor. Due to the cloud of humiliation hanging over Robert's head when his security clearance was revoked, and the fact that Frank had indeed been member of the Communist Party, there was a lot of anger, consternation and argument in Boulder about the propriety of Frank's appointment (this was just a few years after the House Unamerican Activity Committee's nationwide red scare.) Frank overcame the grim cloud of disapproval and went on to have an enormously productive work life and retirement. His more famous brother Robert didn't. I recall hearing discussions about Robert and Frank's character throughout my childhood and teenage years. Slander and hysteria perhaps never completely dissipate.

The movie was a revelation to me of how gossip, innuendo, shame and false accusations can devastate a human life (Oppenheimer's) not only while he was alive, but to his reputation for decades subsequently.

I find it incredible that De Boer is now being posthumously subjected to a comparable phenomenon.

Even more tragic than the humiliation and ostracism that Robert Oppenheimer experienced, the life and career of Chen Mèngjiā form a major theme in the second volume of Hessler's superb trilogy about modern China. 

陳夢家  (Chen Mèngjiā)

The greatest scholar during his lifetime researching the most ancient writings of Chinese, Chen was also an accomplished poet, and a polymath in an array of disciplines. From the outset of the Cultural Revolution, he was targeted as a "Rightist", imprisoned, subjected to hard labor and "re-education". His scholarly books were published without his being acknowledged and ultimately he committed suicide in 1966. Oracle Bones sketches his life and biography artfully as the author follows the lives of a dozen other Chinese grappling with the consequences of both the Cultural and Communist revolutions.

De Boer died in 1974--his reputation intact at the time--indeed, he was Universally acknowledged as  Denver's (and the West's) foremost landscape architect and city planner.

I can only imagine what he would think of the deliberations about his namesake park. His fellow Dutchman, and one time partner, M. Walter Pesman, however, would not have been the least bit surprised. He ran a gauntlet similar to the Oppenheimer treatment and ultimately survived (and triumphed) thanks to his many friends and his fighting spirit. I wrote a blog post about what transpired with Pesman that is perhaps worth re-reading today:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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