Erin E. Riley Borden passionately speaks about her father, Huston “Hu” Riley — a lifelong Island resident and U.S. Army veteran in the 1st Infantry Division — during a Riley Cove dedication ceremony on June 6. The small bay off Lincoln Landing is now named after Riley, who died at the age of 90 in 2011 and was immortalized as “the soldier in the surf” in Robert Capa’s photo of the D-Day Invasion at Omaha Beach. The famous photo was featured on the cover of Life magazine. Story to come. Andy Nystrom/ staff photos
An Island ceremony is set for June 6 to officially dedicate Riley Cove, a small bay off Lincoln Landing that is now named after Huston “Hu” Riley, a lifelong Island resident and U.S. Army veteran in the 1st Infantry Division.
While Illinois considers itself the Land of Lincoln, there are historical sites and stories of his boyhood in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Spencer County, Indiana.
Mercer Island’s Lincoln Landing shoreline has reopened for use and features an improved pedestrian path that makes it easier and more accessible to reach the shoreline through an ADA-compliant design. For the last five months, the city contractor’s tasks have been reconstructing a deeply eroded creek bed, building a vehicle access route for utility maintenance, restoring the stormwater channel to provide for better aquatic habitat and protection against erosion and excess silt and more. The full job is expected to be finished in December. Photo courtesy of the city of Mercer Island