Rye Record community newspaper rye NY

Rye’s Nashional Deficit

– By Alan Beechey –

Stop someone on Purchase Street and ask if he or she has heard of the great Ogden Nash, a man often lauded as America’s best-loved (and most anthologized) humorous poet.

Most people have. Some may even be able to quote him. Perhaps his tongue-in-cheek reflection on breaking the ice: “Candy/Is dandy/But liquor/Is quicker.” Or maybe that poem about the one-l lama, two-l llama. Even a child may know and love “The Tale of Custard the Dragon”, the terrifying beast that just “cried for a nice safe cage”.

Now stop someone on Purchase Street and ask if he or she knows that Nash was born right here in Rye. I guarantee you’ll surprise the majority of them. Think of it — America’s laureate of light verse, one of the most commercially successful English-language poets of the 20th century, and yet most of us don’t know we’re living in his birthplace.

Nash was born August 17, 1902, in a house on Milton Point, according to his most recent biographer. Richard Hourahan, archivist of the Rye Historical Society, tells me that Milton Point at that time was almost entirely divided into some twenty large estates, owned by family names well known to this day: Starbuck, Van Wagenen, Wainwright. Ogden’s businessman father, Edmund Strudwick Nash, would most likely have leased one of these homes for the summer months, or even half the year, giving him an easy weekend escape from New York City and allowing his family to enjoy turn-of-the-century Rye’s bucolic life with the American Yacht Club just down the road. Richard Hourahan and I are digging deeper in the records to pinpoint the address.

There are certainly records of the Nashes’ prominence in Rye’s social life. The family moved to Rye after many years in Greenwich, and they relocated two more times immediately after Ogden’s birth, taking up residence in 1904 — the year of Rye’s own “birth” as an incorporated village — in a large villa called “Ramaqua”, set on 50 lush acres just south of the Port Chester border, beside the railway line. (The house itself stood on a promontory near the Post Road. It’s long gone, but the remains of the hill are still there, perfectly bisected by the spur that connects I-287 to the southbound I-95.) Events at Ramaqua are mentioned frequently in The Times’ social pages.

Ogden, then trailing his first given name of Frederick, was christened at Christ’s Church, and attended local schools until he was old enough to go to boarding school in Groton, Mass. The family stayed in Rye until 1917. Shortly after their departure, a poem by 16-year-old Ogden Nash appeared in The Rye Record’s distinguished predecessor, The Rye Chronicle. This was possibly the poet’s first published work, so we beat The New Yorker by a dozen years! (An earlier reference to Nash in the Chronicle reports that his mother, Mattie, had hurriedly left town to visit him at Groton, where he’d succumbed to measles.)

Even then, the connection to Rye doesn’t end. Nash’s granddaughter, Frances Smith, has told me that her mother, Linnel, remembers his revisiting Ramaqua before it was demolished in the name of progress, probably in the late 1950s. (Ogden Nash died in 1971.) And the poet’s parents, as well as his mother’s sister, Shirley, and her husband, Benjamin Franklin Watkins, (who preceded the Nashes as the occupants of Ramaqua) are all buried in our own Greenwood Union Cemetery.

Of course, as a city, we’re not entirely unaware that we get a free mention whenever Nash’s biographical details are given. Occasional articles celebrating the man’s legacy have appeared right here in The Record; and on the wall behind the main door of the Rye Free Reading Room, on the left as you enter, is a beautifully calligraphed copy of one of his poems (on reading, of course).

In September, the Rye Arts Center will present a celebration of Nash’s life and work — look out for more details.

But isn’t it a dismal state of affairs that the identity of our most famous citizen can still come as a surprise? Surely by now, as a community that’s proud of its heritage, we should have a permanent, prominent reminder that the immortal Ogden Nash spent his formative years in Rye.

Some of us have already contacted the Mayor to ask that the next time he and the City Council approve something that needs a name — a street, a building — they rectify this overdue honor for Ogden Nash.

But now we have a new and remarkable opportunity. There’s a real possibility that the City may take over Rye Town Park, which for a long time has been a quirky administrative anomaly, a leftover patch of the Town surrounded by the City, a bit like West Berlin before the Wall came down. To keep the “Rye Town Park” name is suddenly inaccurate. To rename it “Rye City Park” seems tactless. Both names are sadly prosaic, unimaginative, for a place that should be bursting with inspiration and creativity, and indeed often is, thanks to our fellow citizens who give their time to beautify and care for this special oasis, no matter who owns it. (Its unofficial name among some of its users, “Dog Park,” is unlikely to win approval.)

Doesn’t “Ogden Nash Park” have a ring to it? (At little or no extra cost to our stretched budget, incidentally — the signs would have to be repainted anyway.) It’s no more than a mile-and-a-half at the most from the place where the poet entered this world. And since his time as a resident ended before Rye received its city charter in 1942, Nash belongs symbolically to a time when the City and the Town were one.

In fact, let’s do it anyway, whatever happens with the control of the park. Those signboards need to change: As dedicated park users have pointed out, there are just too many rules starting with “No”.

Let’s replace the big NO with an overdue O.N. — a truly appropriate gesture to celebrate a Rye native son whose prime goal in life was to help us enjoy it a little more, by laughing at its absurdities. He succeeded, and he still does.

Readers interested in adding their name to the list of people advocating a memorial should email Bunnionwoodus@gmail.com.