Peter Pan Playground

I admit to my negligence over the past month. You few frequenters of my blog may not even be checking in much anymore. Yet, I hope to make up for it with a post about how our local community overcame its long-standing, culturally segregated paradigms and focused its efforts and resources to reach an unprecedented achievement.

Four years ago, an organization by the name of "Future Leaders of Emporia" started a class of community-minded individuals. The organization starts a class once per year. Each group organizes some communally beneficial project and takes responsibility for seeing it to completion. A class numbering in the double digits is now down to four, but has accomplished possibly the most lofty goal of any class to date.

Their plan was to construct a playground in the middle of our city's largest park, Peter Pan Park. It is located on the South side of town (an area populated by mostly middle to lower class citizens, Hispanic in majority). The vessel for accomplishing this goal was a company by the name of "Leathers and Associates" out of New York. This company provides two foremen and a design. The rest was up to Emporia, which gathered tools, equipment, materials, permits, funds, and most importantly, volunteers.

The construction phase finally took flight last Tuesday, when ground was broken and the first saw blade spun. Volunteers numbered in the hundreds, working from 6:30 am til beyond sundown. By Thursday night, all the concrete was set and framework in place. Saturday afternoon found all decking screwed in and sanded. On Sunday, the last brush strokes of paint dried as the giant scissors opened to cut the ribbon.

I was completely unaware of the project until just
about a month ago. I signed up to work and put
my hands to the task for the first time on Wednesday evening. I worked a total of about 9 or 10 hours over the course of the construction. From the first day, the main foreman assigned me to a mock treehouse at the entrance to the enclosed play area (the entire playground is fenced in, with only one entry/exit point). With the aide of some helpers, I cut and installed the face of the tree house and used various saws and tools to cut out an organic shape to the tree trunks, tree tops and branches.


The playground is now the largest in town by far. It is colorful, safe, constructed of materials designed to last decades, and most importantly, it is our own. We built it. I was brought to tears when I stood watching dozens of children eagerly wait for the opening speech by our city manager to end as the moment of ribbon-cutting came closer. Most were just staring into the playground and bouncing in place with excitement. The ribbon was cut, the DJ cued up the song, "Celebration" and all those kids (my own two rascals right in the middle of the crowd) burst in and drank up every new wonder we'd built for them. It moved my father's heart like wind on a sail. I fought tears for a solid thirty minutes as I watch my boys play.

I know I'm gushing, but I don't care. I am often pessimistic about Emporia and its citizens' attitudes towards the city and it's own people. Yet, this past week, I was deeply moved to see people of every age, sex, race, and class come together in good spirits to accomplish something for it's children and it's future. That's something to be proud of.