by Jim McCarty | jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop
Like a lot of small Missouri towns, Charleston has its share of challenges. Chief among them is balancing the residents’ desire for amenities such as better parks with more practical matters like repairing leaking water mains.
When Jim Byrd died in 2020, news came of a sizable donation from the longtime resident’s estate. This generous donation was welcomed by city leaders and residents.
The task of earmarking the funds for the good of the community was put into the hands of his good friend and attorney Reggie Young and his cousin Hudson Byrd. Together the two had the challenge to allocate Jim’s gift where it would be most beneficial.
“You’d think it would be easy, but it actually becomes a challenge to ensure the funds make the greatest difference,” says Hudson, a member of SEMO Electric Cooperative. “We sat down and said, ‘What are the needs in Charleston? What can we do to reshape the community?’ ”
Jim was the owner of South Missouri Broadcasting Co., better known as radio station KCHR. He never married, had no kids and rarely traveled, preferring to spend his latter years walking from his home to the radio station downtown. While he was alive his charity focused on local churches. He was never one to step into the spotlight. His charitable contributions came after his death by design.
One thing that happened immediately after Jim’s passing was a scholarship to Central Methodist University, where Jim earned a degree in business administration. “We also endowed a perpetual scholarship to both Three Rivers Community College and Southeast Missouri State University for students graduating from Charleston and East Prairie high schools,” Hudson adds.
“We talked about all these different uses we could make of the money,” Reggie says. “Building a big building for the city or the school just didn’t seem to work, because if we had a big building, nobody had the funds to maintain and support it. We kind of made our donations for the immediate benefit and then we did some endowment funds so the money will hopefully be around perpetually.”
Those endowments included one that would support the city. The other went to Charleston High School. The two institutions can draw on the interest made off the endowments, ensuring the funds last for generations.
Next, they focused their attention on the six parks that serve the residents of Charleston. What they found was aging playground equipment and grass. “It’s not a wealthy area,” Hudson says of the city. “It doesn’t have a big tax base. If you’ve got a sewer collapsing over here, and a park improvement you want, you go fix the sewer first. There were no funds available for updating these amenities. Those things are always getting pushed aside.”
Determined to rebuild the city parks, the two enlisted St. Louis landscape architect and Charleston native Lee Hess to design state-of-the-art parks. They wanted something you would expect to see in larger cities. “We said, ‘What are they doing up in St. Louis?’ ” Hudson says.
The result is colorful playground equipment, perched on spongy rubber matting to prevent injuries. At one park new basketball goals were installed on a full-sized court. There are new bathrooms, pavilions for parties and benches where parents can watch their kids play.
“For a town this size, we’ve got incredible parks. These are something like you would see in Cape Girardeau because Cape has the funding for that,” Hudson says. “Everybody found out about this. Kids from every corner of the town were here. This has really transformed this area of town where you can have a place to bring your kids, have a picnic under the trees.”
There was more to come. The Byrd family can be traced back to the town’s beginnings when they began farming former swampland right after the Civil War ended. The original land borders the city limits along an abandoned Missouri Pacific Railroad corridor that once connected Charleston to Bird’s Point in the east and west to Sikeston.
“My brother, Nelson, and I were talking about doing something that gets people outside, something that gives them an activity to do and something that’s just an enjoyable walk through the woods,” Hudson says. “We discussed greenways, the Katy Trail, all the efforts that have worked out so well across the state of Missouri. How could we do our own little version of that here in Charleston?”
The result was a paved milelong walking and biking path on an abandoned railroad corridor. It tied in nicely with one of Jim’s great loves, trains and steam locomotives. Fittingly named the Byrd Walk, the path connects Charleston’s residential area with Hillhouse Park, home of the Charleston Fighting Squirrels Babe Ruth League baseball team and the Charleston High School Bluejays.
This park is another example of Charleston’s legacy of giving. It was donated by Nelsene and Ray Hillhouse in memory of their son, Benny, who died in a car accident.
“I think people tied to Charleston always say, ‘How could we aid the community,” Hudson says. “Or, in this case, ‘How can we make a positive out of something very sad and tragic?’ What Jim’s estate did here is add two pavilions, some seating and bike racks, which mark the terminus of the Byrd Walk. Where the walk ends there is a canopy of mature trees that shade the path. You can see the farmwork going on in the field nearby, part of the land that has been in the family since the early 1880s.”
In addition to the park improvements, the estate paid for a building to house county road equipment and bought the city an extension for its mower that allows the ditches alongside the Byrd Walk to be mowed.
“The Byrd Estate has been a huge shot in the arm for our community,” says Charleston City Manager Greg Luehmann. “The ice cream on the top of all this, after we got our parks done, is they announced a million-dollar endowment fund to the city of Charleston. I guess you could call it a security blanket. Let’s just say it’s a 5% average, that’s $50,000 a year we’re going to be able to use to maintain our parks or to do the other pressing things.”
Greg says the generous gift from the Byrd Estate has built a lot of positive momentum for the community of Charleston, citing unrelated investments such as a new dog kennel, a street sweeper, fire truck and road improvements to name just a few. “The momentum has really allowed us to think more futuristic and not just trying to survive one year at a time,” he adds.
“You know, Jim wasn’t one for the spotlight, but I think he’d be happy,” says Hudson. “There’s probably more that’s been done than he could have ever imagined would be done. I think he’d be pleased.”