The group dedicated to honoring Bill J. McKown with a memorial gazebo at the Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo hopes to see the project finished before the end of the year, said Robert Feldt.
Parks Director Scott Keeler said he’s notified local contractors and is taking bids for laying the concrete foundation. Once it is ready, Sturdi-Bilt in Hutchinson will deliver the gazebo.
The project will be funded entirely by donations, Feldt said. It was approved by the Great Bend City Council and the Great Bend Zoological Society Board of Directors.
A lifetime Great Bend resident, McKown passed away March 19, 2014, leaving endowments to the zoo and to other community projects.
“The group that has wanted to remember Bill through some suitable memorial has kicked around a number of different ideas,” Feldt said. At one time, they sought approval from the city council to erect a life-size likeness of McKown in his wheelchair on the southwest side of Jack Kilby Square.
McKown became a quadriplegic after he suffered spine and neck injuries in a traffic accident on Aug. 11, 1975, near Fresno, Calif., when he was 19 years old. That didn’t stop him from living a more-than-full life, friends said. He was Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 155; held many positions at the prestigious National Boy Scout Philmont Ranch in New Mexico; and received numerous scouting awards.
McKown served as the Kansas delegate to the President’s Commission for the Handicapped.
He also devoted his time and talents to the Kiwanis Club, Great Bend Jaycees, Barton County Arts Council, Brit Spaugh Zoological Society, Chamber of Commerce, United Way, Cheyenne Bottoms, Relay for Life, Panther Booster Club and Cougar Booster Club. The zoo and other groups will receive financial gifts in perpetuity thanks to endowments McKown created through the Golden Belt Community Foundation.
After plans for a statue in the courthouse square fell through, Sara Hamlin, who was supervisor of the zoo at the time, suggested a gazebo to replace the old fishing dock that had been removed from the park in 2017 for safety reasons. A rusted support rod forced the immediate closure of the feature that had been a staple at the facility since the 1990s.
Feldt also serves on the Zoo Society’s Board of Directors – something his friend McKown talked him into doing – and found members were open to the idea of a gazebo that families could sit in to watch and feed the carp in the pond. Naturally, it would be handicap accessible, built so two people in wheelchairs could enter and sit side by side.
The COVID-19 pandemic slowed things down, but the money has been raised and supporters are ready for the foundation to be laid.
“We have the engineering drawings for this submitted and approved by the city,” Feldt said. “Hopefully, before the end of this year we can have this memorial open.”
