When Mario Villarreal's father joined Mary Yturria and other City of Brownsville administrators way back in the 1960s to work on the Washington Park fountain, it was a city landmark known throughout the Valley.
"My dad helped Miss Yturria and the other people at PUB to get the fountain to shoot out water and synchronize the different colors so that it looked like the water was changing colors," remembered Villarreal, a local business man and former Brownsville Navigation District commissioner. "Now it's a shame for me to pass by there every day and see the condition it's in."
Mary Yturria, who spoke before the city commissioners years later, said that repairing the fountain to its former greatness was her personal dream. She recalled the children of the city and nearby towns gathering around the cement pool to collect water in bottles to take home with them.
"They thought the water would remain colored when they got home," she said with a smile.
Yturria's dream never became reality and hard times have fallen on the old fountain. The old tubing that made the water shoot in geysers and then diminish in size as the colored lights alternated eroded over time and had to be replaced. Today, the geysers are mere spouts of varying sizes that are colored by lights so dim they seem to be but of a single hue.
Recently, workmen were trying to get the water to shoot higher, but found that when the level of the water in the pool got too low, air seeped into the system and diminished the flow.
"When it gets to a certain level, air goes in the pipes and we have to purge it," said a worker. "The lights work, too, but they are not as bright as they used to be so they seem to be of only one color."
Villarreal had tried to work with the city to repair the fountain that was a source of pride for his late father. As a businessman who does extensive business in Mexico, he took it on his own to find the original replacement parts in the interior and passed along the information to the city.
"They already had a committee working on the fountain and they didn't pay much attention to what we told them," he said. "Instead they went out to other parts dealers in the United States and that's what we ended up with. It's nothing like what it used to be."
The committee reportedly spent thousands of city tax dollars to complete its job, but to Villarreal, the result left much to be desired.
"It makes me feel sad because I have a personal relationship with that fountain because my dad worked on it," he said. "If they ever decide to really restore it to its original condition, I am ready to help."
2 comments:
The liquid was, I thought at the time, "Kool-Aid". Many a hot summer night my parents would take us to the downtown park to see the magical lights. I would gladly donate to see these lights restored to their original condition. Let's hold a rock concert for the lights.
Sorry, Mr. Villarreal, but the colored water was there before 1960. I remember it in the early 50's for I lived in the neighborhood, close to your house. I even took my first steps in the cemented area around the fountain so that fountain has played an important part in my life since a child. But I do agree with you that something should be done to bring it back to the condition it was in when we were kids. Besides, when Mr. Wally Jackson was supt at BISD he had all the school start a project to collect money to donate for the water fountain restoration fund. Do you know what happened to that money or how much it was. I was just wondering.
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