Reader's Digest, September 2009
Make it Matter: A Playground for Kids with Special Needs
She always dreamed of a playground for all children. Thousands helped her make it real. By Sally Schultheiss
Click here to read the story
Playground visionary honored by magazine
Reader’s Digest chose Mardy McGarry for its ‘Make It Matter’ series
By CAROL POMEDAY
Ozaukee Press staff
When Mardy McGarry of Port Washington turned to page 41 of the September issue of Reader’s Digest, she was amazed and pleased.
There was a picture of she and Sue Mayer surrounded by special needs students at Lincoln Elementary School in Port Washington and a story about Possibility Playground.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God, we’re in a national magazine,’” McGarry said. “It’s pretty exciting. What a neat promotion for Port Washington and the playground.”
McGarry’s story, “All Work, All Play,” is part of the magazine’s “Make It Matter” series. It explains how the playground, which is the length of a football field in Upper Lake Park and accessible to children of all abilities, became a reality with the help of thousands of volunteers.
Stacy Peters, Possibility Playground fund-raising chairman, nominated McGarry for the honor in December. Those chosen for the “Make It Matter” series receive $1,500 for their cause.
Last year, Reader’s Digest Foundation gave a total $1 million over one year to 10 nonprofit organizations, but that ended in December, a Reader’s Digest editor said.
Peters had hoped McGarry would be eligible for the larger award.
McGarry, who didn’t know Peters nominated her, was interviewed by phone in May by Sally Schultheiss, who wrote the article.
“She interviewed me for almost an hour and called back two or three times,” McGarry said. “Then a fact-checker called. The one thing I was not comfortable with was the ‘I’ statements. I didn’t do it by myself.”
McGarry, who has been a special education teacher for 28 years, came up with the idea for the all-inclusive playground because so often her students could not use play equipment or their wheelchairs got stuck in sand or wood chips surrounding structures.
POSSIBILITY PLAYGROUND organizers Sue Mayer (left)
and Mardy McGarry posed in front of the play area
during the final stages of construction last year.
Ozaukee Press Photo by Bill Schanen IV
Mayer, whose 8-year-old son Sam has Down’s syndrome, joined her in the effort and soon a cadre of community-minded people were holding fund-raisers and seeking donations to raise $450,000.
Peters, who wrote numerous grants to obtain money for the playground, said McGarry deserves the honor.
“We had such a good story to tell and wanted to share it,” Peters said. “Mardy inspired a whole community to get the playground started. She had this vision and got a whole lot of people on board to make it happen.”
When asked by Schultheiss why she wanted to build a playground for children with disabilities, McGarry replied, “It’s only when you build a playground for children with disabilities that you build one for all children.”
The playground was built over six days in September with more than 2,800 volunteers, ranging from children to senior citizens.
The Reader’s Digest article has now made the effort known nationally and internationally.
“If it inspires anybody to build another playground like this, wow,” McGarry said.
Grand Opening October 11: Realizing the possibilities
Children who fidgeted nervously during the obligatory speeches stormed Port Washington Possibility Playground in Upper Lake Park during the official opening of play area Saturday, Oct. 11. Leading the way were Sue Mayer (right in bottom left photo), a project organizer, and her children, Sam, 7, and Danielle, 11. Kayla Bertram (left in bottom right photo) and Melanie Grudzinski played on a turtle while children ran from one area of the sprawling playground to the other in the background. The $450,000 playground, which was paid for with donations, is designed for children with and without disabilities. Hundreds of volunteers built the structure in six days last month. Ozaukee Press photos by Bill Schanen 10/16/08
The playground volunteers built
About 500 people a day of all ages and abilities worked six long days to make Port’s Possibility Playground a reality
Hundreds of people stood in Port Washington’s Upper Lake Park Sunday stunned by the finished product but even more amazed by the phenomenon they had witnessed.
Volunteers — an average of 500 a day — shoveled dirt, drilled holes, sawed boards, pounded nails and sanded corners 12 hours a day for six days until Possibility Playground was finished.
On Friday, four days into the project that began at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, 532 people worked on the playground. Consultants from the New York firm that designed the structure said they have never seen such a turnout on a night typically reserved for high school football games and dinners out.
On Saturday, the legion of volunteers swelled to 696 as the project dubbed Impossibility Playground by some doubters appeared inevitable.
They came from all walks of life and were of all ages. Eighty-nine-year-old Elmer Adam of Port Washington manned the registration booth while Weldon and Louise Reed, 84 and 82, also of Port, worked all six days managing the tool trailer. Ten-year-old middle school students came after classes to help their moms and dads build or deliver water to workers.
They came from miles around, compelled to help build a playground designed for all children, including those with disabilities.
“I worked with two women from Okauchee and Glendale who were on their way to work this morning when they heard about our project on the radio,” said Jeff Wozniak of Port Washington. “They called their boss to say they wouldn’t be in, drove to Port Washington and worked on the playground for 10 hours.”
Mostly, though, they came from Port Washington and nearby communities to take part in a volunteer effort they said had to be experienced to be believed.
“This has been a heck of a lot of fun,” said Doug Cvetkovich of Port Washington, who came to the playground every night after work with his 11-year-old son Kyle. “I’m actually sad it’s over. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do after work now.”
They were people like Nancy Haacke, who worked on the playground with her husband Allan, a Port Washington alderman and former special education teacher.
“I’ve lived here a long time and I’ve never seen anything like this, all these people coming together to build this playground,” she said. “It’s like Field of Dreams.”
Bill Bolles of Mequon said, “The media pooh-poohs all of us in the Midwest as some sort of simpletons, but my gosh, just take a look at what we’re doing here. I’m so delighted to be a part of this.”
They came from large construction firms like CG Schmidt and J.H. Findorff & Son which assigned dozens of employees to the playground project, and local firms like J&H Heating, which in addition to manpower provided equipment and tools.
They came from colleges like the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon.
A playground so large — roughly the size of a football field — that it needed an army of volunteers to build got a helping hand from the U.S. Navy, which sent a force of more than 50 sailors. The Coast Guard also signed on.
No one worked harder than the 17 construction captains who organized the mass of volunteers into a surprisingly productive work force.
Mark Karrels of Port Washington took a week of vacation to help supervise the project.
“This is honestly the best vacation I’ve ever taken,” he said. “Sore muscles, bee stings, sunburn and I loved every second of this project. Seriously, I had the time of my life working with all these people.”
John Dohrwardt Jr., who works for Fine Line Carpentry, said, “This is the most amazing experience I’ve had the honor to be a part of.”
Mark Doll, a sheet-metal worker for J&H Heating who served as a captain, said, “When I first heard about this project I thought it sounded pretty neat, but now I can’t get enough of it. It got personal for me. I really wish it was still going on.”
People who couldn’t participate in construction work found other ways to contribute.
When it became clear that there wasn’t enough food and water for the massive work force, organizers issued a plea for help.
“I was blown away by the response,” steering committee member Stacy Peters said. “People were pulling up in vans dropping off case after case of water.”
Greta Schanen, a member of the steering committee, said, “One elderly woman drove up and said her husband wanted so bad to help but had a broken rib, so the least they could do was buy water for the workers. There must have been 200 cases of water donated the day after we said we needed help.”
About 20 area restaurants donated food for the lunches and dinners that were served every day, steering committee member Carol Lemke said. Church groups and civic organizations also brought food, so much that a donated refrigerator truck was used to store leftovers until the next day’s meal.
Other volunteers, including high school students, manned the child care center set up at the nearby Port Washington Yacht Club. On Friday night alone, more than 140 children were cared for as their parents worked on the playground.
The project amazed even the three consultants from Leathers & Associates, a firm that specializes in community-built playgrounds and designed Possibility Playground.
“I’ve done between 140 and 150 builds and I can honestly tell you it doesn’t get any better than this project,” said Lee Archin, who is from Ithaca, N.Y., but farms in Iran when he’s not building playgrounds. “The people here are just fantastic. To see them all working together is incredible.”
David Johnson, a Leathers & Associates consultant from Menomonee, said, “There is something magical about this project. Who could believe that 2,800 volunteers of all different skill levels and abilities could come together to make this happen in six days.”
The project even shocked its truest believers — Mardy McGarry, a special eduction teacher from Port Washington who conceived the idea of Possibility Playground, and Sue Mayer, whose son Sam has Down syndrome and joined McGarry in leading the grass roots group that spearheaded the project.
“I thought I had a pretty good handle on how this project was going to happen, but even I had no idea how amazing it would end up being,” McGarry said. “It was not just a playground project; it was a community event. Port Washington needs to be so proud that it pulled together to get this done.”
Mayer said, “I’ve lived in Port Washington all my life and this is the first project I’ve seen with so much community involvement.
“I never dreamed this many people would help, and they’re still stepping forward.”
Although the structure was finished Sunday, a handful of volunteers were at the playground this week redoing parts of what they had built.
“One woman begged to come back and redo some of the bricks on the castle,” Schanen said. “She said some of them didn’t look quite right and that she couldn’t stand knowing that it wasn’t perfect.”
When Paul Drews, owner of Drews True Value in Port Washington, found out that the playground committee had to purchase a handful of expensive tools that were not donated, he offered to buy them from the group, Mayer said.
“And when he heard about our pledge that we’d return borrowed tools in the same condition or replace them, he said he would take care of any problems for us,” she said. “This project was like that. People stepped up to do whatever they could.”
Possibility Playground was a foreign concept to many when McGarry proposed it to the Port Washington Kiwanis Club, of which she is a member, a year-and-a-half ago. The club, although it has remained involved in the effort, quickly realized the undertaking was too great for one service club.
A steering committee was formed and the concept quickly became a tangible plan, with schoolchildren naming the playground and conceiving several of its features, such as the replica of the Port Washington lighthouse, a castle and police car.
The focus then turned to raising the $450,000 needed to build the structure. Money came in slowly at first, then larger donations and grants started making a significant dent in the cost.
The start of the project rekindled fund-raising as people lined up to sponsor the playground by buying fence pickets bearing the names of their children or other loved one, even pets in a few cases.
“The sale of pickets was crazy during the build,” Peters said. “People wanted to do anything they could to be part of this.”
Volunteers were putting hundreds of dollars in cash in donation containers as they left the site. One woman whose son and husband worked long hours on the project sent a $1,000 donation.
Months of fund-raising and promotion culminated in the six-day building project, a logistical challenge of near epic proportion.
The three consultants from Leathers & Associates, the only paid people on site, worked with the volunteer captains, who in turn organized a work force of diverse ability.
At first, however, it looked like there would be no work force to manage. A day before the project began, seven people had signed up to work Friday night.
“The guys from Leathers were pretty concerned,” Mayer said. “Then people just started coming out of the woodwork. We had hundreds of volunteers show up. The project took on a life of its own.”
Skilled volunteers set to work building, while those who didn’t know how to use power tools shoveled and raked dirt, painted, hauled lumber and helped out anywhere they could.
But this was also a learning experience for many. People who had never built anything were using power saws and drills by the end of the project after some instruction from the captains.
“Our build captains were amazing,” McGarry said. “These were very skilled guys who took the time to teach people how to build so they could be a part of this project.”
Aside from a few prefabricated pieces, such as slides and swings, the playground was built from scratch. That, organizers said, may have been part of the attraction for volunteers.
“People came one day, then kept coming back day after day,” said Melissa Niemeyer, who coordinated the volunteers. “They wanted to finish what they started.”
Holly Sutinen of Saukville, who spent Tuesday, the first day of the project, hauling lumber, was drilling holes and driving screws by Friday.
“This is totally addicting,” she said. “I can’t stay away.”
By Sunday, proud volunteers were referring to specific features of the playground as “their lighthouse” and “their castle” as they carried their young children on their shoulders to show them what they had built.
“People really took ownership of this project,” Niemeyer said.
At 5 p.m. Sunday, work stopped. The project, with the exception of concrete work, was finished. Volunteers, many with tears in their eyes, stood staring at what they had done, shaking hands and hugging one another.
“People say small towns and close-knit communities are disappearing,” Mayer said. “Not here. Just look as what this community came together to accomplish. The only word for it is amazing.” ---By BILL SCHANEN IV Ozaukee Press 9-24-08
Playground volunteer a real lifesaver
Paramedic happenedto be at Possibility site when man’s heart stopped
Kyle Demler hadn’t planned to volunteer to build Possibility Playground in Port Washington, but after reading about the project in the paper, he decided to spend his day off helping.
Help, it turns out, would be an understatement.
“I go there to help build a playground and I end up saving a man’s life,” said Demler, a 26-year-old paramedic who works for the West Bend Fire Department. “It was a pretty weird day.”
Demler, who grew up in Random Lake and recently moved to West Bend, volunteered at the playground in Upper Lake Park on Friday, Sept. 19. He had just returned to the work site after having lunch in a nearby area of the park when he saw a couple of construction foremen gathered around a man on the ground.
“I came back from lunch a little early so there were only about 10 people on the site. That’s when I noticed the man on the ground,” Demler said. “He wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse.”
Demler started chest compressions, not knowing how long the man had been without oxygen or how long it would take for help to arrive. Ironically, he noted, an ambulance and EMTs that had been at the playground site throughout the project had been called away at that moment.
Then, after about a minute of pumping the man’s chest, there were signs of life.
“He started breathing, but not very strong,” Demler said. “After about another 30 second, he was breathing on his own.”
Shortly after that, the man regained consciousness and started talking.
“He said something like, ‘I wasn’t really dead,’ and we all said, ‘Oh yeah you were.’
“He didn’t have a pulse and he wasn’t breathing. There was no air movement whatsoever. He was dead.”
Ralph Prom, 73, of Grafton, said doctors later told him that his heart had stopped.
“I got really dizzy and was looking for a place to sit down,” he said. “That’s about the last thing I remember.”
Prom, who said he has had heart problems for years, was scheduled to receive a pacemaker and defibrillator later this month but had the procedure done last week.
“I was pretty lucky,” he said. “I really want to thank the guy who helped, but I’ve been a little tied up lately.”
Prom’s daughter, Lisa Dickmann, said doctors told the family that the work her father was doing at the playground did not cause his heart to stop.
“The doctors said it had nothing to do with overexerting himself, that this would have happened even if he was just sitting at home watching TV or reading the newspaper,” Dickmann said. “As a matter of fact, if he wasn’t at the playground, he may been alone at home with no one to help him and who knows what would have happened.”
Oddly enough, Demler said, he noticed Prom among the hundreds of volunteers shortly after he arrived at the playground.
“I saw this older man working and thought, ‘What a great project. People of all ages are helping out,’” he said. “Little did I know that a few hours later I would be doing chest compressions on him.”
Demler said the key to saving Prom was finding him quickly and starting chest compressions.
“Usually, paramedics aren’t on the scene right away and it may take five or 10 minutes to get CPR started,” he said. “You can revive a person, but if they haven’t been breathing for a period of time, they often don’t end up surviving.”
Shortly after Prom was taken by ambulance to the hospital, Demler was back at work shoveling and raking.
“I was just shaking as I was shoveling,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘He couldn’t have been dead.’ But he definitely wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. It was a pretty amazing day.”
--By BILL SCHANEN IV Ozaukee Press staff 10-2-08
The Can-Do Playground
The relentless volunteers who drove Possibility Playground to success showed what amazing things this community can accomplish
--Ozaukee Press OPINION Editorial, September 19, 2008
Children will be thrilled by the playground being built this weekend in Port Washington’s Upper Lake Park. But this playground is for adults too—for the adults of the Port Washington-Saukville area to behold as a symbol of the amazing things a community can accomplish.
It’s called Possibility Playground, because it is designed in a way that makes it possible for every child to enjoy it, including those who are disabled. But when the project was announced, with a fund-raising goal of nearly half a million dollars, doubters suggested that “Impossibility Playground” would have been a better name.
Now it turns out that “Possibility” stands for not just opportunities for disabled kids, but for a bracing reaffirmation of the credo that anything is possible.
The volunteers who united around the project have raised most of the $450,000 needed for the design and materials. They’ve secured in-kind donations of services and materials of enormous value. And they’ve recruited the hundreds of volunteers who began building the playground Tuesday.
They accomplished all of this against daunting odds. Their fund-raising goal was a veritable Mount Everest to scale in this small community, especially during a time of economic malaise, when many worthy organizations and causes are competing for scarce dollars.
The Possibility Playground project became possible because its organizers and volunteers embraced their cause with a zeal that missionaries would envy and that many in the community found irresistible.
The volunteers made their pitch at farmers markets, service club meetings, festivals, the County Fair, almost any place more than a few people gathered.
And what a compelling pitch it was—an opportunity to be part of an effort to do something wonderful for the community’s children—all the community’s children.
The distinctive feature of the Possibility Playground is that it will be accessible by disabled children—think of the joy awaiting a wheelchair-bound child who might never before have been able to join other children on playground equipment. But it would be a mistake to categorize this as a facility for any special group. It is for all children regardless of ability or disability.
That was emphasized when organizers asked the school children of Port and Saukville to submit suggestions for playground features. Some of those clever and creative ideas will be seen in the playground that materializes this weekend.
Many projects are community initiatives—that’s how a lot gets done these days when local government’s ability to provide anything beyond essential services is shrinking—but this one, grass-roots and home-grown, is community with a capital “C”; not just the planning and fund-raising, but its hands-on construction. Hundreds of men and women, assisted by teenagers and workers’ children as young as 10, are pounding nails, drilling holes, sawing boards, raising beams, building what months ago was only a dream.
The end result will be a complex and intriguing place to play, that is easy to access and safe yet still challenging, on a shaded site the size of a football field in Port Washington’s signature park. It will also be an enduring testament to the can-do spirit of the Port Washington-Saukville community.
Possibility Playground will be a great resource, but an even more valuable one is the band of motivated citizens who created it. There is much to be done in this community, and they’ve shown they know how to do it. We have no doubt they will answer another call.
Speaking of answering the call. Construction help is still needed. Just show up at Upper Lake Park between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. any day this week through Sunday. Your reward for investing this sweat equity? You’ll be able to say, “I helped build Possibility Playground.”
Not Just Any Playground
About the size of a football field and designed with all children in mind,Possibility Playground will require an army of volunteers to build next week
How hard can it be to assemble a playground? If it’s Possibility Playground, a universally accessible play area to be built next week in Port Washington’s Upper Lake Park, you’re not talking about just any playground.
Designed in part and named by children, this playground, which will feature a replica of the Port Washington lighthouse, a pirate ship and a dizzying array of ramps and slides, will be built essentially from scratch by an army of volunteers in just six days.
The details alone are staggering.
• Three semi-trailers of wood will be used, enough to build three ranch houses.
• The playground will be held together by 575 pounds of nails and 55,360 screws,
which volunteers have been busy color coding for the project.
• The project will require enough tools to fill a 48-foot semi-trailer.
• If every volunteer works one four-hour shift, roughly 3,000 people will be needed
to make Possibility Playground a reality.
• The finished playground will cost $450,000 and cover an area roughly the size
of a football field.
“There are so many details that sometimes it feels like we’re flying by the seat of our pants, but we know this can be done,” said Sue Mayer, co-chairman of a grass-roots group that launched Possibility Playground last year. “It’s going to be so exciting to see this dream become a reality.”
Reality sets in Tuesday, Sept. 16, when construction begins. Volunteers will work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day through Sunday, Sept. 21. Then a rubber surface will be poured to finish the playground, which is scheduled to open the first weekend in October.
“If it rains, we’ll keep working. About the only thing that will stop us is lightning,” Mayer said. “We’ll have spotlights and hanging lights so we can work into the night.”
The most immediate need is tools, said Mardy McGarry, co-chairman of the playground organization, whose dream it has long been to build a playground that can be used by children with and without disabilities. Organizers are asking people who wish to lend tools to do so this week so they can be organized in a trailer that will be kept at the construction site. “Our guarantee is that we’ll return the tools in as good or better condition or we’ll replace them,” Mayer said.
The most urgent need, however, is volunteers to build the playground. If each volunteer works one four-hour shift, about 450 people each day are needed, with about twice as many on Saturday, Sept. 20. Of the nearly 3,000 total volunteers required, about 2,300 still need to be recruited, organizers said Tuesday. The hope, of course, is that volunteers will work more than one shift on a given day or work more than one day, so the numbers are a little deceiving. The point is, however, it is going to take a small army to build Possibility Playground.
“It’s really important that people come on the first days,” McGarry said. “The more work we can finish early, the more time we’ll have in the end to add the details that will make this playground really special. And people who come to help at the end of the project may end up saying, ‘I wish I had come earlier in the week because this is a lot of fun.’”
McGarry said volunteers of all skill levels are needed. “A lot of people are nervous because they really don’t know how to build anything,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. They can hold a board for someone who is cutting it or get bolts to assemble parts. There are so many things to do that we need all the help we can get.”
Children 14 or older can volunteer to work, while those between the ages of 10 and 13 can help their parents build the playground. Free care for children who are toilet trained will be provided at the nearby Port Washington Yacht Club.
Food, which like most everything else associated with the playground is being donated, will be served at lunch and dinner time. “Work stops and everyone eats together,” McGarry said.
What’s unique about Possibility Playground is that it doesn’t come as a kit that needs to be assembled. There is no owner’s manual.
After asking children throughout the area how they would design a playground and with an eye toward structures that would be easy and fun for all kids and caregivers to use, organizers commissioned a design from Leathers & Associates, an Ithaca, N.Y., company that specializes in community-built playgrounds.
The company is sending three consultants to Port Washington for the project. They will oversee 15 volunteer foremen, or build captains, as they are called. These captains will, in turn, oversee specific parts of the project. “Everything is broken down into simple tasks with simple instructions, like cut five 2-by-4s into these lengths,” Mayer said.
Some of the playground features, such as slides, have been pre-made. But most components will be built from scratch. For instance, organizers could have purchased the spindles that will help form the railings on ramps, but instead received a donation of pipe from Milwaukee Stove and Furnace Supply. The pipes were then cut by J&H Heating Inc. of Port Washington, which is involved in many facets of the project. (Mayer’s husband Jeff is president of the company.)
“It’s absolutely amazing the things that are being donated,” Mayer said. “Three-quarters of the hardware has been donated and the list goes on and on.” Among the donations, just to name a few, are hotel rooms and cars for the consultants, cellular phones, food, gallons and gallons of water, bulldozers and semis, tools ranging from drills to table saws, a refrigerated truck, recreational vehicle, tents, tarps, lights and portable bathrooms.
“If anyone has a 20-by-30-foot tent, we could still use one of those,” McGarry said.
The donations are indicative of the momentum that has developed behind a project envisioned by McGarry, a special education instructor who teaches an early childhood class at Lincoln Elementary School in Port Washington.
Possibility Playground, with its wide ramps and flat rubberized surface, is designed to be accessible for children and caregivers with disabilities, but that doesn’t mean it is only for children with special needs, McGarry said. “If you make something accessible, then you’ve made it good for all children,” she said. In addition to the lighthouse and pirate ship, the playground will include a rock-climbing wall, chain walk castle, police car bouncy bridge, a mural of Lake Michigan, slides, rings, monkey bars, tunnels and a music area.
Championed by a committee of volunteers, McGarry’s goal of building a universally accessible playground slowly gained momentum.“At first, we’d go to events like the Port Washington farmers market and we’d have to grab people and tell them about the project,” McGarry said. “Now people are coming up to us asking how they can get involved.”
Fund-raising was the first big hurdle. “When we said we wanted to raise $450,000 to build a playground, people thought we were absolutely crazy,” Mayer said. McGarry recalled presenting the concept to Port Washington officials. “They basically said, ‘OK, you go ahead and do that.’ They didn’t think we could raise that much money,” she said.
There’s still money to be raised, but now the focus is completing a project that people once thought was impossible. “We know this is possible, but it’s going to take the whole community to do it,” McGarry said. “People are going to want to be part of this. When it is finished and they come here with their children, they can say, ‘I helped build Possibility Playground.’”
Before the playground can be opened, concrete will be poured around the structures, then the rubber surface will be installed. The opening is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 4.
“Unfortunately, kids won’t be able to play on the structures right away, but it will be worth the wait,” McGarry said.
--By BILL SCHANEN IVOzaukee Press staff
Follow Us to Possibility Playground
Early childhood teacher Mardy McGarry center) and Sue Mayer (back row, right) were surrounded by their muses, the children of the area. The women are the driving forces behind Possibility Playground, a universally accessible play area to be built in Port Washington in September. Ozaukee Press photo by Sam Arendt
By Carol Pomeday
Ozaukee Press staff May 15, 2008
When hundreds of people come together in September to build Possibility Playground in Upper Lake Park in Port Washington, no one will be happier than Mardy McGarry and Sue Mayer. The women have spearheaded the effort to build the $450,000 play area that will be as large as a football field and keep children of all abilities active for hours.
McGarry, an early childhood education teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Port Washington, has dreamed of a playground like that since she took her students to the All Children’s Playground in Cedarburg, which is also designed for kids with or without disabilities.
For the first time, McGarry said, she could watch her students play on all the equipment instead of standing on the playground with her arms outstretched, ready to catch them if they fell.
Traditional playgrounds, including those at her school, are often inaccessible to children with disabilities or have only one or two structures they can play on, she said.
“I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t we do this in Port?’ and started voicing it to parents four or five years ago,” McGarry said.
When Mayor Scott Huebner formed a task force to explore uses for the We Energies coal dock along the lakefront, McGarry joined the committee and suggested an accessible playground be built there.
“It was one of many ideas, but the question was, ‘When would this happen?’” McGarry said. “In the meantime, I was building up momentum for the playground.”
McGarry is a member of the Port Washington Kiwanis Club and suggested it as a project. The club embraced it, but as McGarry researched such playgrounds, she realized it was going to be very expensive.
“There was no way a club of 40 people was going to raise a half-million dollars, and I knew it was too big for me to head,” McGarry said.
Some people would have given up, saying it was beautiful but impossible dream, but not McGarry, who has been a special education teacher for 28 years and is a strong advocate for children with disabilities.
She turned to Mayer, who has a marketing background and home-schools her 7-year-old son Sam, who has Down syndrome. Mayer — who often uses playgrounds as a classroom, rewarding Sam for reading a sentence or following a sequence by allowing him go down a slide or climb a structure — barely blinked, but insisted, “I want good swings.”
Sam, like most children with disabilities, has poor muscle tone and can’t use most swings. Mayer learned the hard way that her son has outgrown baby swings.
“I had to call my husband on his cell phone once and tell him Sam was stuck in a baby swing,” Mayer said.
The parents were able to free the boy, who weighed 60 pounds at the time.
Mayer became aware of the needs and gifts of special children through her children. Her older son has dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. When Sam was born, she became his teacher.
“Sam has taught me more than I could ever hope to teach him,” she said. “He’s taught me patience, persistence and to look and notice the small things in life. He slows me down and grounds me.
“He doesn’t judge anyone. He likes people unconditionally. If more of us could look at the world the way he does, we would get along better.” Mayer said she often consults with McGarry if she’s having a problem with Sam.
McGarry decided to pursue a degree in special education after working a year at Bethesda Lutheran Home in Watertown, which serves children and adults with disabilities. “I found out I liked it and I was pretty good at it,” McGarry said. “It’s really fun to get up every morning and say, ‘I want to go to school.’ I love my job.
“But if I had a special-needs child, I couldn’t do this. I tell people I don’t burn out because I have them for only 2-1/2 hours at a time.”
At the heart of the women’s effort is the belief that all children deserve a safe, secure and fun place to play. Possibility Playground promises to provide that and much more.
It was designed by Leathers and Associates of Ithica, N.Y., using ideas from area children and parents.
McGarry, Mayer and Sam visited similar playgrounds in Appleton and Manitowoc and took the best from each. Engineers and physical therapists who work with children with disabilities were also consulted.
Some of the best ideas came from children and adults who have disabilities, McGarry said.
Chris Mathews, a fifth-grader at Thomas Jefferson Middle School who is visually impaired, wrote a letter in Braille suggesting all structures and ramps have signs in Braille, noting he likes to know what he will encounter when he starts up a ramp. He also suggested a tactile map of the playground and iron pipes that make musical tones.
One of the fun things about the playground is the way children of all abilities have embraced it, the women said.
“We can’t emphasize enough that this is not a handicapped playground. It is for all children,” Mayer said. “The kids had great ideas and we used a lot of them.
“This is going to be a jewel for Port Washington. It’s not the type of playground where you go for an hour or so. You can be there all day and not try everything.”
McGarry predicted it will be a destination for school field trips and families.
A steering committee of about a dozen dedicated members, mostly parents, has raised $210,000 so far and hopes to raise the remainder through sponsors, grants, donations and fund-raisers before the build week, which will be Sept. 17 to Sept. 21.
Sponsors are being sought for every aspect of the playground. Many of the signature structures, such as the lighthouse, ship, fire truck, police car and castle, have been purchased by companies or individuals, but there are more available.
A white picket fence will enclose the entire playground, which will have one entrance. Each of the 1,020 pickets can be engraved with a name or logo for $30. Bricks for the entryway are being sold for $50 to $750 each.
The most expensive aspects of the playground are the poured-in-place rubber surface and wood-and-resin composite ramps that will be wide enough for wheelchairs and connect the play structures. Together, they cost $250,000.
The rubber surface provides a level, soft ground that will cushion falls and be easy to maneuver with wheelchairs and walkers. The surface is thicker in areas where children jump or can fall, such as swings and climbing structures.
“You can’t get hurt on it,” McGarry said. “Any surface that is shredded can’t be used by wheelchairs and is difficult for anyone with an unsteady gait.”
The women hope to see business or service organization logos on the rubber surface and ramps.
They also hope to find sponsors for whimsical fiberglass art creations by Marina Lee of Milwaukee, who would work with students to create fanciful creatures that can be placed throughout the playground.
Since both women teach children with special needs, there will be plenty of fun educational components. There will be signs asking children to find things, such as three turtles or five birds. Game boards will enhance hand-eye coordination and each climbing structure will tone different muscles.
But mostly it will be a fun place for children of all abilities to play together.
Meet Ozaukee County's Guitar Heroes
They awed audiences all summer long as they participated in a Guitar Hero contest and fund-raiser for Possibility Playground, and on Friday, Aug. 8, a group of dedicated youths participated in the finale at IE Franks in Saukville. Ryan Weckerle of Saukville, who competed in the 16 to 20 age group, won with a score of 282,187 and claimed a 47-inch, high-definition television as his prize (top photo). Second place went to Cody Thimm, who competed in the 21 and older category and won a PlayStation 3 with a score of 268,755, and third place was claimed by Cory Hawley, who competed in the ages 11 to 15 group and scored 252,191 to bring home a Guitar Hero game. Fourth-place winner Phoenix Dasbach of Saukville (above photo) earned an MP3 player with a score of 151,102. He competed in the 5 to 10 age group. Photos by Sam Arendt, Ozaukee Press staff
Checking out the new sign at the future home of Possibility Playground are some of the organizers and staff of Bella Lei Salon and Ozaukee Therapy, whose recent fund-raisers help raise more than $5,000 for the playground. Sam Arendt/Ozaukee Press photo
