Lights switched on at Walnut Grove ballfield

The City of Walnut Grove mayor and council along with team members, coaches and family members take in the glare of the new lights at the local ballfield earlier this month. Photo credit: Jim Thompson for The Walton Tribune

The mayor and city council of Walnut Grove saw the light Thursday, Jan. 16, and they liked it.

After 20 years of either neglect or indifference on the part of previous city administrations during which the lights on a city ballfield were dark, Mayor Stephanie Moncrief and the council – Linda Pilgrim, Rachel Davis, Erica Miles and Maxine McClanahan – recently budgeted the $18,000 needed to install new lights at the ballfield near the city’s administration building.

The new lights blazed bright for the first time Thursday night, and as soon as Thursday’s city council meeting was adjourned, the mayor and council gathered at the field. They watched happily as the Walton Wrath, a traveling baseball team for players 9 years old and under, put the field to use at night, for the first time in two decades, for a chilly practice session.

A renewing vision Beyond the literal light that the mayor and council’s action brought to the ballfield, it also served as a metaphor for the city reaching for a new vision of itself.