Out & About
The folks at Wollman Rink may have been skating on thin ice Tuesday night, but they were demonstrating the strength of support for Central Park. Each year the Women's Committee of the Central Park Conservancy throws a free skating party as a thank-you to donors and their families. This year more than 450 people came, including children who had never skated before and devoted regulars who have been skating for decades.
The Central Park Conservancy is the nonprofit entity that contracts with New York City to manage the park. It takes a lot of money to run the park, and a good portion of it comes from individual donations. But private fund-raising can be difficult for the conservancy because many people think of the park as a public resource.
The skating party is one of the conservancy's clever ways to get people thinking just the opposite: that the park is theirs and theirs alone. At the very least, the chance to skate with just a few hundred others — and to rent skates and sip hot chocolate without waiting in line — made people feel very good about the park.
The event was a democratic thank-you, with no donor singled out, but certain guests deserve special mention: the president of the Women's Committee, Nancy Paduano; the chairwomen of the Children's Education Committee, Bonnie Pope and Robin Joseph, who arrange for presentations about the park in schools, and the chairwoman of Playground Partners, Gillian Miniter, who corrals corporate and private support on behalf of the park's 21 playgrounds.
"This is a wonderful tradition," the president of the conservancy, Douglas Blonsky, said.
The timing could not have been better, since the event fell on the first cold evening of winter. Wollman Rink and its indoor facilities looked clean and well lighted, and the music, which ranged from Sinatra to Madonna, pleased skaters of all ages.
