I simply could not let this piece of self-aggrandizement from Tom Carper pass following the death of Russell W. Peterson. The News-Journal article noting Peterson’s passing and his many accomplishments featured this quote from Carper:
“Just after his 75th birthday, Gov. Peterson came to see me in the governor’s office and said, ‘We ought to do something about the riverfront along the Christina River.’ I said, ‘Will you help me?’ He said, ‘You bet!’ And he did. The rest is history. At an age when most people are ready to push back and take life easy, Russ Peterson just kept picking up speed. He married his wife, June, who proved to be the wind beneath his wings. Her love and enthusiasm enabled him to pack more into the last 15 years of his life than anyone I’ve ever known. What a giant. God knows I’ll miss him. We all will.”
An out-of-context reading of this would suggest that Peterson and Carper were like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. You know, “Hey, let’s put on a show!”
There is nothing in the article to suggest that this quote misrepresents the origins of the revitalization of Wilmington’s riverfront. Yet that’s exactly what it does.
I know. I wrote the resolution, a Senate Concurrent Resolution, at Sen. Robert Marshall’s request, urging the Governor to set up a Rivers Task Force. And the Governor enthusiastically embraced and supported this project. The governor in question? Michael N. Castle. I have no doubt that Sen. Marshall and Gov. Castle had discussed this in advance, and that Marshall knew he could count on the Governor’s support before he passed the bill.
That’s right. Gov. Castle established the Rivers Task Force. He appointed Gov. Peterson and Dr. Trabant as co-chairs, he made his DNREC staff available to the task force. Anyone who wants to diss public employees would do well to exclude the incredible people from DNREC and the City of Wilmington who provided extraordinary assistance to these projects.
This does not in any way denigrate the contributions of the Carper Administration. The Governor and his staff fully supported the project and were instrumental in moving it forward.
But, the implication by former Governor Carper that Governor Carper was the catalyst, along with Peterson, for this project, is demonstrably untrue, and I think that history should accurately reflect what really happened. I will leave it to history to judge whether Carper’s misstatement was inadvertent or deliberate. Too bad that Ed Freel is likely working on that ‘definitive’ history as we speak.