What One Woman Can Do

“You have to go see what is going on in our Tapiola Park” was told to me by more than one person as I toured Astoria, OR. So, after having dinner at Baked Alaska we explored the town, with hopes of finding it along with other sites. We found it just as it was getting dark and I knew as soon as I saw it that I would have to come back in the daylight to see and talk to the visionary person behind the new Tapiola Park Playground (www.tapiolapark.org).

I was told to look up Wendy Berezay at the site, expecting to find one of the old-timers typical of most small towns. What I found was a surprise.

“We moved from Montana two years ago so that my husband could take over the State Farm agency. I was back home in Florence, MT when I saw a very unique playground and came back here and started talking it up to everyone I met, whether it was on the street or in the grocery store. Our old playground had collapsed here several years ago because of all of the rain and moisture we get, just rotted it away.” Wendy told me. She is the mother of 5, aged 5 to 22.

“Within a month we had about 60 people who were interested in doing something. We looked at different ways to fund it, thinking that it could either be a tourist draw or only for the community. We did a presentation to the Parks Board and the City Council in October, 2004. We had our first community wide meeting in December. We decided that we would do it all with donations, because by law, we couldn’t use any public funds or we wouldn’t be able to use volunteer labor. (Jack’s note: Another of those ridiculous laws that are used to protect a class of people to the detriment of all. Also another Law of Unintended Consequences that ends up preventing projects from taking place that could benefit a community….Ok, ok…I’m getting off of my soapbox).

“We ended up with 18 people who were willing to sacrifice a year of their life to make this project happen. We met every week or two for the past nine months with this core group. We’ve raised over $200,000 in donations and grants and had over 3,000 volunteers working to build this. If you took their labor into account, this would be a $700,000 project.”

“One of the first things we did was to get the kids involved. We sat down with them and asked them what they would want if they could have the best playground in the world. We had to discard some of their ideas like hot tubs and bungee cords, but came up with a design that reflected the historical treasures of the town. We’ve got a Liberty Theater, the trolley, a boat, the Astoria Column, a Lewis & Clark cabin, a pilot boat, a whale, the bridge, and other notable objects from Astoria. There is a climbing wall with a mural of the Peter Iredalle, a famous shipwreck near town, that will give them a feeling like they are climbing on the ship. The whole project is handicap accessible on multi-levels.”

I was inspired and awed by the sight of hundreds of volunteers working feverishly on this project in a sprint, as Wendy said, “From dirt to done in six days.” It’s great that there are so many Wendy Berezay’s in the agurbs®,