COLUMBIA, S.C. — The City of Columbia, along with representatives of Hyatt Park and Keenan Terrace Neighborhood Associations, unveiled a kiosk to tell the story of the Eau Claire community.
“Legacies are so important and right now, with new people coming into the community, our history can sometimes get lost and buried. You can come right here and you can find your history,” Jacqueline Williams said.
Williams is the program coordinator at the City of Columbia’s Parks and Recreation. Part of this new kiosk highlights her late grandfather, Leroy Moss.
“The beginning of the history of this area was segregated and it’s so wonderful now how we have all come together and live in this one area. It just says that we are one. This is where we live, this is where we play,” she said. "We have a diverse neighborhood and we are going to continue going in that direction. He would be so proud."
Hyatt Park now displays the Eau Claire community kiosk, which highlights the neighborhood's history.
“Of course we acknowledge the Native Americans who were here before any of us. It goes from there through the development of Hyatt Park by Frederick Hyatt and the naming of the Eau Claire neighborhood by Frederick Hyatt, and from there we go all the way up to the present,” Betsy Newman said.
The kiosk not only shows the history of the neighborhood but it also looks to the future.
“We’ve included three young people who grew up in the community because we thought the best way to wrap up a history would be to look at the future. We asked three young people to give us their thoughts about the future,” Betsy Newman said.
Newman is the former president of the Hyatt Park and Keenan Terrace Neighborhood Association. She helped create the kiosk and hopes it will keep the history of the Eau Claire community alive.
“People can live in a place for a long time and not know what came before them. my hope is that because this is visual and it has texts that it will teach people in the community about the place they live,” Newman said.