Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
Tags
BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Collingswood's removal of a plaque dedicated to late actor Michael Landon has brought outcry from Landon fans from all over, and has also seen different accounts of events involved.
Landon, who was born Eugene Orowitz, grew up in Collingswood, and died of cancer in 1991 at age 54. He starred in TV programs "Bonanza," "Little House on the Prairie," and "Highway to Heaven."
Former Collingswood resident resident Abbe Effron raised the $1,400 funding for the Landon memorial privately.
The Retrospect reports that someone from Collingswood brought the brass marker wrapped in towels to the newspaper’s office. The brass marker honoring Michael Landon had sat near the “Little Treehouse on the Prairie,” a playground funded in 1997 for $6,700 by Landon’s widow, Cindy, in Collingswood’s Knight Park.
The marker was removed by the borough during a cleanup effort in November. According to the Retrospect, Collingswood Mayor Jim Maley said the borough was not interested in keeping the marker.
But according to an Associated Press report on NorthJersey.com, Maley said that wasn’t accurate, and police are looking into how the marker got from the town’s ownership to being delivered to the Retrospect. Maley said he’s been receiving angry emails from Michael Landon fans from as far away as Sweden and Wisconsin.
The marker was moved after borough officials thought it was a potential safety hazard in Knight Park. Maley said the marker had been moved to Collingswood’s public-works facility on Champion Avenue. According to Collingswood Patch, Maley said, "Then someone removed the marker from the concrete base and took it from the facility. It could have been laying out. It was not thrown out."
Retrospect publisher Brett Ainsworth called the town's public works facility "a place to put things you don't know what you're going to do with," according to the New York Times. "It's got dumpsters, and I know they use it for composting," he added.
Maley said the memorial will be returned to the park most likely in the spring, in a different location.
