In Pensacola, we're fighting to keep our memorial cross

In every city across America, public parks are a source of community pride. They are where people of all backgrounds come together peacefully for rest and recreation, for fellowship and friendship, for sport and play, and for other community-building activities that bind a city's people together.

In my city of Pensacola, where I serve as mayor, we have 93 of those parks, places for our community to gather and places where our long and rich history is on display.

One of those places is Bayview Park. It's a gathering place that means a lot of different things for different people. I ride my bike through it every day. On any given day at Bayview I see mothers pushing strollers, fathers and sons loading fishing boats at the dock, seniors lunching at its senior center, teens playing tennis, children on a playground, professionals eating lunch on a bench, a guitarist strumming chords in the amphitheater. There you will find vibrant, peaceful community on full display.

You will also find a cross.

For 75 years, the Bayview cross has stood silently in a quiet corner of the park. The cross was donated by local members of the Jaycees — a nonprofit national civic organization that counts among its members Bill Clinton, Larry Bird, and the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger — to unite Pensacola, a military town, on the eve of World War II.