Remembering a Baldwin Park stalwart

For decades, Baldwin Park has been a place where residents near and far come to exercise, meet with friends and perhaps pick up a new hobby. For 44 of those years, Al Kaplan worked at the park, overseeing everything under the “recreation” umbrella.

Kaplan was constantly busy. The park offers a variety of activities, including the ever-popular tennis and basketball courts, so he had his hands full. But he wouldn’t have traded it for anything. “People go to work because they have to earn a living,” said his widow, Irene. “He went to work because he loved every minute of it.”

Kaplan, who grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Oceanside for 45 years, died of a heart condition in May, at age 86. Although he is no longer a presence in Baldwin Park, those who use the park for fun and exercise are making sure that he will always be remembered.

Fran Carroll, an avid tennis player at the park for the past 15 years, took up a collection in order to create two plaques honoring Kaplan. Her fellow tennis players were quick to pitch in, Carroll said, and at a luncheon last Saturday, the first plaque was installed in the park’s clubhouse.

“He was such a wonderful man,” said Carroll, a Freeport resident. “Everybody really liked him a lot. No one ever complained about him.”

According to Carroll, Kaplan would organize matches between tennis players of comparable skill. He had a good eye for evaluating talent, Carroll said, which made playing at Baldwin Park special. He would also give beginners lessons.

Kaplan had four children and six grandchildren. In addition to tennis, he was an avid basketball player and coach in his younger years. He coached basketball at Brooklyn College for 10 years in the 1960s and ’70s and was a college referee at Madison Square Garden for 15 years. He also taught phys. ed. and was the dean of boys at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn for 25 years before he came to Baldwin Park. While working as a camp director in Pennsylvania, his wife said, he was known as the Pied Piper, because kids were so fond of him that they followed him wherever he went.