Cory Lidle Statue To Be Rededicated

Nine months after an unknown vandal(s) destroyed a memorial honoring late Yankees pitcher and former Glendora resident Cory Lidle, the repaired bronze statue will be rededicated this Saturday.

The ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 15, at 10 a.m. Members of the Lidle family and those that helped restore the statue will be in attendance.

The statue memorializing Lidle at West Covina’s Big League Dreams Park, 2100 South Azusa Avenue, was heavily vandalized February 21. Park employees found the destruction that morning. Plaques were also stolen from the memorial.

Lidle’s statue, positioned at the front entrance to the fields, received over $100,000 in damage, while the loss of the three plaques, dedicated during the park’s grand opening in 2007, is estimated at over $6,000.

The suspect(s) have not been caught.

Lesley Elwood of Elwood & Associates, based in Marina Dl Rey, managed the restoration project, which was performed by Roger Green of Exclusive Welding in La Crescenta, Mel Green – Structural Engineering, Sandy Decker of Decker Studios in North Hollywood and Rosa Lowinger & Associates in Miami, Fla.

Lidle was a 34-year-old, right-handed pitcher for the New York Yankees when he died in October 2006 in New York after his single-engine aircraft somehow went off course and crashed into the 30th and 31st floors of a 40-story apartment building. Also killed in the crash was Lidle’s flight trainer.

Lidle, born in Hollywood, Calif., graduated from South Hills High School in 1990. He and his wife Melanie lived in Glendora.

Lidle left behind his wife and a son.

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Image courtesy of the City of West Covina