Memorials are supposed to memorialize, i.e. to keep the names they bear alive; but often, it seems, the memorials themselves need aides memoires if they're to serve their purpose.

Franklin Norman, a member of the city parks and recreation board, is amazed to discover that the city's parks, as it were, have no history. Nobody has the facts at hand how or when they came to be parks, or acquired their names. Assembling such information presumably would need an exhaustive ransacking of decades of city council minutes.

Before getting around to the parks, this writer can't resist going Franklin one better in the public amnesia department.

A while back, the Vernon County Historical Society got a letter inquiring into the state of Nevada's Confederate memorial, its monument to Gen. Sterling Price.

Say what? Yes indeed. Till the 1920s Nevada was home to the Gen. Sterling Price Chapter No. 901 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and this group presented the people of Vernon County with a monument to its namesake, Missouri's favorite Confederate general.

It took the form of a heavy stone drinking fountain, erected just outside the courthouse's north door. It's still listed in nationwide catalogs of Confederate monuments.

Recently the 50-years-ago column reported that a parking lot was being carved out of the courthouse's north yard. Clearly this is when Nevada's only Confederate memorial was vandalized. Odds are the officials who ordered it carted off to the dump were blissfully ignorant that it was anything other than a (doubtless obsolete) drinking fountain.

Amnesia regarding city parks hasn't been quite so flagrantly destructive; yet inexcusable and embarrassing mistakes do regularly crop up.

Somewhere, not long ago, we were solemnly informed that Blair Park, at Pine and Maple, took its name from Blair School, which stood on the site till it burned in 1956, and that in turn it was named for that well-known Civil War hero, Col. Charles W. Blair. Aargh! The truth was awful enough. Franklin P. Blair was just the sort of man schools and other government doings usually get named after; i.e. a hack politician. His traditionally Democratic family opportunely turned Republican on Lincoln's election, in time to get in on the gravy. Frank got a major general's commission, though he was never much force as a general. As Republican gravy dried up, after the Civil War, they switched back to the Democrats. It was after this second switch that Nevada found Frank worthy of lending his name to a local school.

Likewise, Davis Park, in eastern Nevada, has been erroneously credited to furniture dealer J. R. Davis. There is indeed a J. R. Davis Roadside Park, on U.S. 54 a bit this side of Dederick, a park for which this Davis labored long and hard. The park in eastern Nevada, though, was named for Burrel Davis, a Nevada grocer and sometime peace officer.

Then there's Izaak Walton Park, or Lake. Finding this title unwieldy, the city dropped the "Izaak" after it acquired the property. With the result that many conclude it must be named, of all things, after Sam Walton! A friend goes to the even-more-confused extreme of stubbornly calling it "Walden Pond," after Henry David Thoreau's famous temporary home.

The obvious recourse is to bring back the full name, and put up signs to that effect. And Franklin believes he's won over the city.

Izaak Walton Lake came into being as the home of a private fishing club, and reasonably enough honored the English author (1593-1683) of "The Compleat Angler," the world's first and most famous book on the art, or science, of fishing.

The late Ken Postlethwaite, who devoted more than one column to local place-names and the amnesia often afflicting them, would be the first to appreciate that already folks are forgetting the source of the name of Postlethwaite Park, on South Washington.

And then there's "Marmaduke Who?" Such was the wry reaction of Charles Brewer in a guest editorial seeking to remind folks that Marmaduke Park, west of the old state hospital building, honors not a cartoon canine but rather Confederate Major General John S. Marmaduke, who as governor swung the hospital Nevada's way in 1887. Reportedly it was also on his advice that ex-outlaw Frank James became a law-abiding Nevadan about the same time.

Earp Park, west of the fire and police departments, is of course named for Col. Claude C. Earp, who filled many influential state and local positions in his own lifetime, besides being the son of a first cousin of Wyatt Earp and owner-editor of the Nevada Daily Mail.

Lyons Stadium honors George Lyons, a local major-league baseball star. George's name and that of Clark Griffith, Vernon County's other major-league celebrity, whose name is memorialized also in Griffith Stadium, together form the team name of the Griffons.

Hester Park, at Atlantic and Cedar, seeks to perpetuate the name of Leonard Hester, landowner-farmer of the Harwood neighborhood. How this came about, though, isn't clear. The spot looks neglected, and at this writing seems even to sport a realtor's sign.

Despite its rather unimaginative name, Spring Street Park is one of Nevada's pleasantest. The site was once called Kissinger's Pasture, though it was owned by the Wights. Presumably a Mr. Kissinger rented it as a place for Nevadans to send their cows for the day.

Radio Springs wore out several names in early years. First called "Lake Park Springs," it was all set to become "Elks Lake" (there are even collectible pieces of china sporting this name) when the Elks Grand Lodge vetoed the purchase. It was also considered as home for the Knights of Pythias and the Weltmer Institute, but both deals likewise fell through.

Simeon West, the grateful Weltmer client who bought the park in 1910, is responsible for the name. He decided to cash in on the cachet of the famous radioactive springs at Carlsbad and Marienbad in Bohemia. Radio Springs' water does have a few micro-micro-curies of radioactivity, but far too few to be either beneficial or harmful. ("Radio" as a term for broadcasting, or for receiving sets, didn't become current till 1920.)