The Land and Water Conservation Fund has pegged $27,775 for the project.
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer

STRONG – Recess is about to get a lot more fun at Strong Elementary School.

That’s thanks to a massive fund-raising effort by a grassroots group of parents who decided what students in Strong really needed was a new playground.

Strong students have a bare-bones metal playground from the 1950s. Over the years, many of the apparatuses that made up that original playground have gotten the heave-ho, due to safety concerns.

So, a few years back, Maria Logan, a parent of two Strong students now in fourth and seventh grades, gathered a few fellow parents and a couple of teachers and, according to Strong Principal Felecia Pease, hit the ground running.

“She really just grabbed the bull by the horns,” Pease says gratefully.

That bull turned out to be a cash cow, and in less than three years, Logan and her crew, which includes teachers Linda Pitcher and Ann Burdin and parents Ellen Bonney and MaryLou Katz, have raised thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Just this week, the playground committee got a big push on the swings from the federal government’s Land and Water Conservation Fund, a division of the National Park Service, which announced that the project had been awarded $27,775.

Pease got the e-mail announcing the good news, which brings the project’s total earnings to more than $62,000, at 10:45 a.m. Thursday and was stunned. “I opened it up and had to read it over a few times. I just thought, ‘oh-my-word.’ So I got on the intercom and told the students.”

“I could hear the cheers just rumble through the hallway,” Pease says, still dizzy at the thought of it. “It was just an incredible sound.”

Logan had a response much similar to the students. It was the first grant she’s ever written, making the smell of new money for the community’s playground that much sweeter.

What made her proposal stand apart from the rest was that 75 percent of the playground will be handicap accessible. That’s a lot considering most playgrounds are lucky to have 25 percent accessibility.

“There are always going to be handicap kids,” Logan explained. “We want them to feel they are equally as important as everyone else.”

She is also optimistic that making the playground accessible will open up awareness about disabilities and that able-bodied students will pitch in to help push chairs up the ramps to the second level of the playground, creating new friendships and open minds along the way.

The entire playground will be comprised of high-quality metal and plastic and feature every delight from slides to swings, monkey bars to wobbling bridges that sway under the weight of students.

In order to appeal to older students and community members who use the playground, there will also be some fitness-related apparatuses like a balance beam, sit-up bench and pull-up bar.

A foot-thick layer of soft chips of wood will coat the ground, making the fall to earth a little safer for those consumed in the elation of recess bliss.

Logan hopes to have the playground installed next spring and at the latest, open by fall. When school is out, community members will be able to use the playground and principal Pease thinks that’s what makes the project so special.

“The Strong School is the center of this community, so this is very important,” she said.

For a town that has been hit with economic hard times in the past year with the closing of Forster’s manufacturing, a new playground is a welcome sign.

“It’s a hopeful thing for this community,” Logan said.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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