The Lafayette Memorial Centennial Ceremony

Wonderful unplanned things can happen when you're lucky enough to live in New York. I went for a walk today and came across...the Centennial ceremony commemorating the May 10, 1917 unveiling of Daniel Chester French's Lafayette memorial in Prospect Park. It was sponsored by the American Friends of Lafayette organization, and the speakers' program included the French Consul, a Brooklyn Deputy Borough President, and historians and art critics. Opera singers sang the American and French national anthems, and in the approved French fashion, the event climaxed with the laying-on of a wreath, It was all quite moving and unexpected. It's just the sort of thing I would have attended had I known in advance. It seemed like kismet that I should have been walking in the vicinity at just the right time.