"Please Walk On The Grass" was Frank Vaydik’s motto. He once said, "When I find a playground where the grass is thick, I want to know what’s wrong. It’s a good sign that no one is using it." He delighted in finding bare spots in parks because it meant people were using them. "It’s our responsibility to keep (the grass) growing, not the public’s," he said.
Vaydik was Superintendent of the Kansas City Park Department from 1964 to 1967, when his title was changed to Director of Parks and Recreation after the Kansas City Welfare Department’s Recreation Division was combined with the Park Department. At the time of his appointment in 1964, Vaydik was only the third Superintendent of Parks in the department’s 70-year history. He remained as director until his retirement in 1980.
Vaydik was the kind of person who never seemed to stand still. He was a big man, six foot-three and more than 200 pounds. Constantly on the move, he could walk fast and think fast. He was most happy when several things were going on at once.
In 1966, he toured the park and boulevard system with a Kansas City Star reporter, Al Bohling, who wrote: "As he drives his car, one hand seems to be on the wheel and the other in constant motion...More than anything else, Vaydik is a man of action, and his years as Park Superintendent underscore the point. He is reluctant to speak of the past, but he inherited a system that had been coasting for years."
During a period of retrenched city budgets, much maintenance and capital improvements were deferred throughout the city, and it was particularly noticeable in the park and boulevard system. Many of Kansas City’s famous fountains were broken, did not operate or only ran for short times each day. Many boulevard and parkway sidewalks and curbs were crumbling. Many monuments and statues in public spaces were grimy with the dirt of decades. Thousands of trees on streets, boulevards and in parks had been removed following a Dutch Elm disease which blighted the city, and the stumps remained.
Originally hired by the Board of Park Commissioners to fight the Dutch Elm disease in 1962, after his appointment as Superintendent, Vaydik began a vigorous program to fix these and other problems. The Park Department replaced lost trees, using a newly-passed earnings tax. Grounds maintenance was placed on a 10-day schedule. Fountains were repaired and operated longer each day. Monuments and statues were sandblasted and cleaned. Hundreds of flower beds were planted throughout the city.
But Vaydik was not only concerned with daily maintenance, he also looked to the future. During the 1950s and ‘60s, thousands of acres of land had been annexed north of the Missouri River. As Vaydik looked at this vast expanse of land, he realized that the Park Department had no current overall master plan for the future. Parks staff began work on a master plan, which, by its publication in 1965, was an ambitious strategy for expansion of the boulevard and park system throughout Kansas City, with an emphasis on the area north of the river. It was not a static, routine plan, but a bold concept to carry the park and boulevard system decades into the future.
Another Vaydik dream was the "softening" of downtown Kansas City. "People aren’t content to live in drab, dirty, uninviting surroundings anymore," he said. "We have to clean it up. How do you do this? Well, one way is to plant trees and flowers and shrubs and grass to make the center of your city as pleasant as possible." During Vaydik’s tenure in Kansas City, the size of the city’s park and boulevard system almost doubled, from 5,700 acres to more than 9,500 acres.
Other major accomplishments were assuming control of the World War I Liberty Memorial and Union Cemetery; the preservation of Hopewell Indian artifacts and establishment of an archaeological museum; and the creation of two public golf courses. Line Creek Park, where he established the archaeological museum, was renamed Frank Vaydik Line Creek Park after his retirement.
In addition to helping expand and improve Kansas City’s famous park and boulevard system, Vaydik was a major player in the national effort to merge several recreation and park organizations. These groups include the American Institute of Park Executives, the National Recreation Association and American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums. These diverse groups combined to form the National Recreation and Park Association in 1966.
In 1990, Vaydik was honored in Phoenix on the 25th anniversary of the NRPA merger. His contributions to the formation of the national organization’s structure provides a strong basis for the NRPA today. He also was a key player in the creation of the Urban Park and Recreation Alliance, the American Academy for Parks and Recreation Administration and the Missouri Park and Recreation Association. In 1979, Vaydik received the NRPA’s Distinguished Professional Award, the highest professional honor awarded by the NRPA.
Terry R. Dopson, present Director of Kansas City Parks and Recreation, said of Vaydik: "His insistence on excellence and quality in our Park and Boulevard system has provided the guidance for the creation of ‘A City Within a Park’ in Kansas City."