PERSONALITY
ABOVE: Jerry Belk was hired as the director of Tuscaloosa’s City Recreation Department in 1966. The department was later renamed the Tuscaloosa Park and Recreation Authority. In 1997, the Belk Activity Center was opened in his honor. RIGHT: Belk at Veterans Memorial Park, one of the many projects around town created thanks to his efforts.
Gary Minor. That stability is a credit to the foundation Belk laid, Phelps said. Longtime friend Leroy McAbee said Belk set the system on the path to the exemplary product it is today. “He’s one of the finest, most honest, sharing public servants that the taxpayers could ever want,” McAbee said. “If all our employees in the government were as honest and caring as he is, we wouldn’t have to worry about where our tax money is going.” When he retired in the late 1990s, PARA named the Jerry Belk Activity Center at Bowers Park in his honor. Of course that was merely retirement from PARA, not public service, for Belk. He’s served with, among others, the Tuscaloosa Public Library Board, Tuscaloosa County Department of Human Resources Board, Salvation Army, Tuscaloosa County Heart Association, Veterans Memorial Park Board, First Baptist Church, the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and as chair for several terms of the Tuscaloosa County Civic Hall of Fame, to which he was elected in 2006. Belk is also a past president of the Exchange Club, Alabama Recreation and Parks Association, “A” Club Alumni Association of the University of Alabama, and other civic and service organizations. One of his chief focuses now is maintenance and upkeep of Veterans Memorial Park on McFarland Boulevard, which Belk, a U.S. Army veteran, calls a “sacred piece of land.” It was built on the site of Northington General Army Hospital, one of the largest military hospitals in the world at the end of World War II, and dedicated in 1978 as a memorial for vet-
erans of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. “The memorial is about knowing the price of freedom. I want this park to be here 200 years from now and be better than it is today, so everyone knows what the price of freedom really is,” Belk said at this summer’s restoration of a 1960s Huey Helicopter to the park. Belk has been singled out for his leadership many times, receiving the 2009 Distinguished Service Award from PARA, among others. But he’s always quick to note that he couldn’t have done it alone, that the collective will and work of the citizens shapes the community. On his election to the Civic Hall of Fame in 2006, Belk said: “I was a strong believer in ‘help yourself, and then everybody will help you.’ It’s the people who have been around me who deserve this award.” 65
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