A new playground for the Haines school is progressing in its design and is quickly gathering donations. Leading the project is Kim Larson, who has been running a daycare center on Piedad road for 24 years. The playground is a sort of monument to honor the memory of her daughter Jenae, who was a kindergarten teacher at the school.
Kim Larson remembers: ”It was something that she always talked about, was how the playground needed a lot of help at the school, and I know that she was really wanting that to happen”
So Larson assembled Team Jenae, to gather funds and plan. To date $310.000 have been raised, out of an expected cost of $450.000. Support has been pouring in. More than 5 thousand individual donors have contributed on their GoFundMe webpage.
“A lot of the funding came from our GoFundMe, a lot of local donations, we’ve had donations from Norway, we’ve had donations from Guadalupe, recently we’ve had the Chilkat Valley Foundation give us $5000 for the playground”
The plans are a joy to behold. It is a coastal Alaska theme, with a river and a hill and an ocean.
“It’s going to have a lighthouse, some whale tails, some spinning toys for the kid, a basket swing and a spinner, which is kind of like a merry go round but it’s more up to the 2022 standards than our old merry go rounds that you push and somebody can fall off. And it’s going to be wheelchair accessible ”
Larson hopes the project can be completed in 2023.
Jenae Larson died in the Mount Riley landslide in 2020.
She would have turned twenty five on Wednesday.
Here is a link to the Go Fund Me page.
