Haines residents recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of a beloved playground. The event allowed gatherers to remember how the park took the whole community coming together.
The building of the T’lingit Park playground was a memorable moment of unity in Haines. The T’Lingit Park Recreation Project, as it was then called, was spearheaded by the Haines Women’s Club. They hired a company specializing in community building projects. A couple of engineers came to town with containers full of material, and residents volunteered their labor.
This was twenty years ago, and the park has withstood the playful abuses of an entire generation. The facility looks weathered but solid. On Saturday hundreds of children of all ages came to celebrate the 20th anniversary.
Cupcakes, bubbles, face painting.
“Like a unicorn”
Running, climbing and screaming were all on the menu. And memories too. Kim Phillips was a preschool teacher at the time.
Phillips: “All of my preschool kids we would take field trips up here, and all of the kids would do ‘One two, soap the screw, one two, soap the screw”, so they spent a lot of time soaping screws, and we also got to use sandpaper to sand ladder rungs.”
Phillips says high school students over 18 were allowed to use power tools. The project took years of fundraising. Residents paid to have names and quotes engraved on structures. Susan Johnston, the borough clerk at the time, handled the grants. Before building, company representatives came to consult with the future users.
Phillips: “The guys that drew the plan came to Haines a few times and visited classrooms and talked about what the kids wanted. And the more the kids talked, they would draw it out. They okayed it with the kids, and said ‘Does this look right?’ So the kids really had a big part of it.”
The playground was built in five days. Residents would sign up for a morning, afternoon or evening shift, and come spend a few hours digging, screwing, cutting or painting.
On the day the building supplies arrived, local kids lined up on Main Street and cheered as the delivery trucks paraded through downtown. A temporary electrical panel was installed, big enough to power hundreds of tools.
Sarah “Tigger” Posey was one of the young moms who spearheaded the project. She enrolled her dad to come and help. She says he stepped into a hole on the first day of construction, and broke his leg. He came back and spent the next several days with his leg propped up distributing tools to volunteers. Posey says the tools were donated. Free food was provided – three meals a day. And childcare was offered to allow parents to pound nails.
The playground is covered in wood chips. Posey says despite local protests the company insisted on providing their own special blend of wood chips. Those special chips went through a rigorous selection process. You can ride a wheelchair on them without sinking. They absorb impact in a way that children can fall without harm.
They were also wet, heavy, and in Seattle. Posey says the load of chips ended up over the container’s weight limit by a factor of four, but were shipped on the barge anyways. Once in Haines, the trailer full of chips was parked by the playground, but it weighed so much it started sinking in the soggy ground. The trailer began to list dangerously to one side. Posey says they used a loader to lift the corner of the trailer then propped it up with timbers. Volunteers spread the chips by hand.
Twenty years later, the same wood chips are still cushioning children’s falls.
Phillips, the then preschool teacher, says the kids who got to participate in the building really felt protective of the place.
Phillips: “When the kids would come and play here, and I came a lot with my kids, if anybody threw garbage on the ground they’d say “don’t do that, this is our park”, they really had ownership in this park.”
Gina St Clair was at the celebration. She was there twenty years ago.
St Clair: “I think what’s really great for me is to see a whole new generation of moms and little kids here, and I’m looking forward to bringing my grandson here in the very near future.”
She remembers the sense of unity that permeated the worksite.
St Clair: “You know, it takes a community. It took a community to make this happen, and Haines did it. And wouldn’t it be great if there was another project where the community could come together again. It was really special.”
The sense of ownership has lasted. Self appointed builders still come to the playground from time to time, with their tools, they make sure everything is secure. It was such a good time.
