A $330,000 grant will help fund new and upgraded amenities at Daisy Stocking Park, a four-acre neighborhood park near Bethune-Cookman University. The grant award was announced by the Daytona Beach Racing and Recreational Facilities District at their board meeting last month. Planned improvements include adding a new children’s playground, shading and upgraded seating for the existing outdoor amphitheater, a walking trail with fitness stations, a family pavilion with barbecue grills, new sidewalks and landscaping.
Annually about 3,000 people attend one of the many community events at Daisy Stocking Park, which is open to the public year round. Last summer the city moved the popular Midtown Music Concert Series to the park and hosted its first Game Night there in September.
The park is a destination on the city’s Black Heritage Trail and was named after Daisy Hardy Stocking, one of the city’s foremost humanitarians and medical practitioners. Stocking came to Daytona in 1916 at the behest of fellow South Carolinian and Scotia Seminary alumni Mary McLeod Bethune. Having trained as a registered nurse, Stocking supervised McLeod Hospital on the campus of Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute (now Bethune-Cookman University) from 1916 to 1918. In 1971, three years after her death, the park was established by the Daytona Beach City Commission.