If you have $7,500 burning a hole in your Passbook you might consider Adopting a Bench at Central Park, leaving your more-or-less permanent mark in the city’s most famous outdoor space.
Browsing the plaques along Wallach Walk last week I found myself contemplating the rabbit hole of mortality which informed many messages on these benches, while also imagining a future in which I have enough money to throw away on something like this.
The plaques contain marriage proposals, enigmatic proclamations, epitaphial memorials typical of tombstones, and in the case of architect Stanley Prowler a motivational message which curiously includes an endorsement for a particular candy bar:
“Love NY City, walk, read the NY Times, cherish friends, dress well, be amusing, play with babies, eat Kit Kat bars and ice cream but stay slim.”
Amongst such lightweight amusements I did a double-take when a villainous name appeared: Madoff.
These four plaques, honoring the memory of Bernard Madoff’s parents (Ralph and Sylvia Madoff) and in-laws (Saul and Sara Alpern), are located near the 67th Street entrance to the park, about a half mile from the former penthouse apartment of one of the greatest scam artists of all time.
The signature name of a much-loathed criminal enterprise maintaining a place of honor in a city park did not settle well with me. I winced with mild revulsion, interpreting Madoff’s public pronouncement of love toward his parents as a self-serving lie. (they were crooks too, by the way.) Lies infested virtually every aspect of Madoff’s sociopathic life of deceit. Why should this “Loving Memory” of his
parents, paid for with stolen money, be any different?
In 2009 the New York Post reported on a call to have the plaques removed. That effort appears to have gone nowhere, while predictions that the markers would be vandalized have not come to pass.
Should a name synonymous with epic fraud be removed from these benches? The Madoff Recovery Initiative evidently chose not to sue the Central Park Conservancy for clawback recovery of the con artist’s Adopt-a-Bench donations or from his foundation’s annual 5-figure charitable contributions. Presumably the Conservancy was deemed wholly unaware of the money’s criminal origins. Like many non-profits which benefited from Madoff’s largess the park was spared from having to return Madoff’s charitable gifts. Even if the park was ordered to return the $30,000 Madoff paid for them there is no reason to assume the plaques themselves would be physically removed.
Should the Central Park Conservancy itself consider removing them, simply as a matter of good taste? These “gifts” came from dirty money. Other plaques in Central Park may have come from questionable funds as well but none would be so recognizably criminal. The very public and acrimonious disintegration of the Madoff family makes any kind of “Loving Memory” look bitterly ridiculous, transforming these benches into a tastelessly morbid tourist attraction. One of the “grandchildren” hanged himself with a dog leash, the other declared “My father is dead to me”, while two of the children will likely die in prison.
If anything is left from the Madoff Recovery Initiative then perhaps the relatively paltry amount of $7,500 could go toward one “Adopt-a-Bench” plaque in memory of those whose financial lives were wrenched asunder by Madoff’s massive scam.
In a perverse way I think Madoff would approve.
