howeenterprise.com
Monday, January 18, 2016
Page #2
A man's quest for a ball field
Ray Bledsoe shows the first ball thrown at Ferguson Field in 1971 It will be 45 years old this July. The piece of dirt gifted to the city for the use of a park laid dormant by the railroad tracks. It was turned into a ball field for kids by a vision and labor of love by one man who couldn't stand the though of young boys not getting a chance to play baseball.
nearly half a century on that very field.
The opening of Ferguson Field didn't come without a major tragedy as a TP&L (Texas Power and Lights) worker lost his life due to electrocution while installing the lights for the field which filled the little ballpark with tears on its Ray Bledsoe was relatively new to grand opening and a dedication to Howe in 1970. The Sherman High the young man. School graduate and Burlington Industries worker had moved his The property which houses the park family to Howe in 1964 along with was once a grain elevator owned by many others during the Sherman the Ferguson family who once Industrial boom from FM 902 to made Howe famous as the largest FM 1417 in the 1960s and 70s. His shipping center of grains in Texas. efforts to give the youth of Howe a Upon the closing of the bricked ball field delivered thousands of elevator, the company dismantled it kids to be able to play baseball for brick by brick and dug a hole and
buried all of the bricks in the Fast forward to 1970 and Bledsoe ground where the current field was named commissioner of the rests. The land sat empty for years Howe Youth Baseball but was gifted to the city with the organization. That changed the designation that it had to be used as future of that property to this day. a park and when it did, it had to be named Ferguson Park. "We only had three teams, a pony continued on Page #6
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