Transcript

Location: Jim Asfoor Trail, Festival side of the trail

My name is James Longhurst. I’m a historian at the University of Wisconsin, La  Crosse. So we’re looking kind of North, Northeast towards the Northside of La Crosse along a paved trail. There’s a wetland to our left. To the right is this sort of winding course of the La Crosse River. This trail was named after Northsider James Asfoor, a member of the Syrian Lebanese Community here in La Crosse, and the way that it got named was somewhat accidental and haphazard. I think I was in a meeting with the City Bike Ped Advisory Committee sometime around 2015 or so when they were talking about paving this, and we were pointing out how awkward it was to call this the North Bank La Crosse River Trail. And I think I brought this up to Louis Coleman, who worked for the city of the time, and he said “Well, great, what should we call it?” And I said “I don’t know.” And I went to Chuck Lee, the head of the UWL History Department and said “Are there any famous northsiders that were bicyclists that we could name this bicycle and walking trail for?” And he came back to me awhile later, and said, “You know, in the Oral History Program we have an interview with Jim Asfoor, who was a Northsider and a prominent and ardent cyclist, member of the League of American Wheelman.” And I thought that was a great idea, and so I suggested that to people within the city planning. And that was the last I heard of it until about 2017 when a resolution popped up and someone had put together Chuck Lee’s knowledge of the oral history interview. And this trail became a memorial for Jim Asfoor, and it’s had that name on official documents ever since, but right now there’s no signs on it that indicate that historic connection.