Softball field renamed to honor Frank E. Smith
COHOES, N.Y. » Tuesday night’s Common Council meeting was a special one for first ward councilman Bill Smith, as the council unanimously voted to rename one of the city’s youth softball fields in honor of his late father, Frank E. Smith.
The resolution allows city officials to rename the youth softball field off of Third Street in the city’s Van Schaick Island neighborhood.
According to Smith, his father dedicated close to 40 years of his life to Cohoes Girls Softball and the youth of softball, while also serving for nearly 20 years as the District 7 Capital District Commissioner of the Amateur Softball Assoc., the Junior Olympics AAS girl’s softball program.
Frank E. Smith, 80, passed away on Nov. 29, 2017 at his home.
“[He was basically] a one man show, he did get some help every now and again, but he dedicated his life to softball, to youth of Cohoes, and this is a great honor,” said Smith after the meeting, who also had other family members in attendance during the council meeting in City Hall Tuesday night.
Smith said he and family were ecstatic when Council President Christopher Briggs asked him about making a resolution to rename the softball field in honor of his late father.
“Chris asked me if it was alright to do and I went to my family and they said go forward with it because my dad would be honored,” said Smith.
Prior to the council voting on the resolution, Mayor Shawn Morse asked Smith and the council if it would be OK to rename the field the Frank E. Smith Softball Field instead of the Frank E. Smith Memorial Softball Field because he said he wanted people to know that it was more of an honor for the city doing this.
“I don’t want people to believe that it’s a memorial, I want people to realize that it is an honor to have generations and generations of the next superstar softball players to be [ playing] on that field,” said Morse “We are naming this after a man who really was an inspiration for softball in the city of Cohoes and I don’t want it to be a place looking at it as a memorial, I want it to be a place where people are excited and thrilled to go down there and play and I think [ Frank] would say the same thing.”
Smith said that he is happy to be able to honor his dad in this kind of way and he believes that his dad contributed positive work within the city.
“He did good; he did good and I’m glad that I was able to be part of this,” said Smith.