IN MEMORY FREDERIC R. “FRITZ” COUDERT
The Bridge Builder An old man, going a lone highway, Came, at the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm, deep and wide, Through which there flowed a sullen tide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim, For the sullen stream had no fears for him, He turned when he reached the other side, And built a bridge to span the tide.
Frederic Coudert, President of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, passed away on December 5, 2008. He gave this institution 46 years of pure passion. He was enormously generous, his spirit unconquerable. He was truly the “Bridge Builder” immortalized in Will Allen Dromgoole’s poem which hangs in the Palmaro Clubhouse lobby, a tribute to an earlier generation of Kips Bay voluntary leadership, which inluded Fritz as a young man.
"Old man," cried a fellow pilgrim near, "Why waste your strength with building here, Your journey will end with the ending day, And you never again will pass this way, You have crossed the chasm deep and wide. Why build you the bridge at the eventide?" The builder raised his old gray head: "Good friend, on the path I have come, There followed after me today A youth whose feet will pass this way. This chasm which has been naught to me, To that youngster may a pitfall be. He, too must cross in the twilight dim, Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
Our new Clubhouse is gratefully named for Fritz and Margaret Coudert.
GODSPEED, FRITZ
-Will Allen Dromgoole