A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday in Jackson Park, naming a new state-of-the-art running track and artificial turf football field for the late Bob Pickens.
Pickens played for the Bears, wrestled in the Olympics, and was an advocate for the parks.
“You look at his story and it is truly remarkable, a NFL player, an olympian, and we got to make sure not only that we know these stories but our young people know this story,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was on hand.
The new track sits adjacent to the future Obama Center and the project was paid for by the Obama Foundation. The field is home to the South Side Wolfpack football team.
“That football field, that track is our sanctuary. That’s where we save lives,” Wolfpack coach Ernest Radcliff said.
Bob Pickens’s daughter Tori noted the irony in a field being named for two accomplished black men is in a park named for a slaveholder.
“As community members and children utilize these facilities as the track and field, they may be inspired to learn more about people, who not only look like them, talk like them, or share similar backgrounds as them, but who were deemed significant enough to have a permanent space dedicated in their honor. This is huge guys,” said Picken’s daughter Tori.
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