I don’t know all the ins and outs of the Rosser/park department problem, but I know that something or someone doesn’t bend, while Margaret Rosser knows all about bending.

“Our house had rubber walls,” Margaret said when I interviewed her for book two of “Islanders Meet Your Neighbors.”

Margaret’s father, a 1920s social worker, was well known to the court as a man they could count on to take in a homeless boy. Margaret’s father always said, “I’ll ask at home.”

“And we always said yes,” Margaret says. “Our house had rubber walls. There was always room for one more. We had 14 boys at our house at one time. We kids stayed a the dinner table and did our homework while Mother and Dad washed the dishes. I can still see my dad with a dishcloth over one arm, his foot on a chair, while he helped a boy with his homework. My father was good in math.”

I don’t know if the park department has a problem with math, but I do know that one woman is hurting, and I ask the park department to bend a little, like the Rosser family bent time and time again, and just to do the right thing.

— Dorothy Hall Bauer