The Soldiers and Sailors Monument rises majestically atop a marble-paved knoll overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River, in upper Manhattan. An enlarged version of an existing Athenian monument, it was erected in 1902 to salute Civil War conscripts and is visited not only by history-minded tourists but also by school kids seeking a smooth spot to roller-skate.
I pass this column-lined tribute often, in walks with wife, but always with a certain dread. Why? Because many years ago, when our daughter was maybe five or six, I paid what was surely my last visit to this popular New York City landmark.
Amy had learned to skate on the uneven sidewalk in front of our apartment house, but, one sunny Sunday, said she hoped we could find a smooth surface where she could practice. That nearby monument seemed an ideal spot unless it was crowded with other weekend skaters seeking a similar experience. My daughter had pretty good balance; she just needed an unchallenging surface to roll around on.
My memory of the technical aspects of our outing is fuzzy, but I think I carried her skates, as we walked from our apartment to the site and helped her put them on, once we’d climbed up to the monument’s smooth marble base. There was no one else there, no one to impede her movement, so we both felt she’d have an unchallenging experience.
Once her skates were on and Amy felt secure, I found a bench and opened a section of my Sunday paper, as she went off to skate. The monument is round, which meant that, like one of those disappearing dolls in old Swiss cuckoo clocks, Amy would skate off to the left and, moments later, emerge on the right, waving at me as she rolled by.
I don’t recall how many rotations she made, but she nodded and smiled each time she passed me, earnestly trying to increase her speed and better her balance. Each rotation took maybe half a minute. I figured that we’d stay there awhile until she tired of her efforts and wanted to go home. We’d had a late breakfast, but she knew that a snack and a drink awaited her when we returned.
Sitting there, I could watch her each time she rolled by and hear her skates pressing the sleek, shiny surface when she vanished briefly from view. So I put down my newspaper at one point when the sound ceased. Why? Why had she stopped? I sat in silence a moment, then decided to follow her tracks to the other side of the monument.
It took only a few seconds to reach her, and I saw her standing beside a kneeling man who stood when I appeared. The sheepish look on his face alerted me, but I said nothing when I took my daughter’s hand and led her away, back to the street side of the monument. By the time I turned around, he had vanished.
“It’s time to go home for our snack,” I said quietly, and Amy nodded agreeably. Unanswered questions crowded my mind, as I helped her remove her skates. I didn’t want to alarm her but was understandably desperate to know what, if anything, had happened during those moments when that stranger had engaged her.
She was quiet as we walked back to the apartment, and I tried—oh-so-tactfully—to frame questions I needed to have answered about the man who had stopped her. All she said was that he had been singing to her, just before I arrived to lead her away.
I was hardly mollified.
Had he touched her? Exposed himself to her? Tried to lure her away? And would he have done so if I hadn’t appeared? We walked in silence, back to the apartment. Later, at nap time, without mentioning the singing stranger, I made a point of reminding her to never speak to folks she didn’t know or let them touch her. She nodded, as I recall, yawned and seemed eager to be read to before her nap.
l suspect—and certainly hope—that Amy has forgotten that incident. In the decades since then, we never talked about it, and I never shared it with my wife. It was just something that happened, like a skinned knee or a non-injurious stumble—the things that parents, like the kids themselves, were used to dealing with.
But the ominous nature of that incident behind the monument, and the direction it might have taken if I’d not been reasonably alert gave me a recurring chill.
Not since that event have I ever climbed up to visit that monument. I nod, in salute, when I see it but always give it a pass. It was built as a tribute to fallen warriors, but for me, it always signals what could have been a mind-bending incident.
I know some parents often seem excessively concerned about their children’s safety, but the truth is: Where your kids are concerned, I think it’s O.K. to err on the side of vigilance. Being casual could arguably be—and maybe criminally—negligent.
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