Spring Break
Penny Park
Inlook To A Community Owned Park
Kelsi Skee
Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: Community & Calendar
Penny Park means a lot to the community of Silver City, we all worked so hard those few years to raise the money and to actually build the park. This park is owned not by the city but by the community.
I have a very special tie with Penny Park as well as many others. My mother and father would take me and my siblings back east to Amsterdam, NY to visit our grandparents. Every time we went we would walk up this big hill to this huge wooden playground that had this huge hippo mouth you could run through. We kids loved going to that park. That park was one of the parks designed by Bob Leathers, and made by the community, the man who designed Penny Park. I was only around 5 years old at the time when my mother began researching the park and presented it to two of her close friends, Gwen Owens, and Janet Hamill. These three women did their research in order to build a Robert Leather's community park here in Silver, because of the lack of good parks. More and more people stood by them and with everyone's help the park was able to get started. Bob Leather's came to Silver City stayed in my home for weeks to plan the best park Silver City ever saw.
Those times were so beautiful. I remember every day I was there at the park along with plenty of other children brought by their parents every day. We all helped out in some way. The community came together to build something worthwhile and for everyone to cherish. We little kids, though we couldn't do much, would paint pictures, and more inspiring, saved up all of our change to bring to school. Our schools would hold competitions for the class with the most money saved up. Then all that change was taken to my elementary school, Stout Elementary, and laid out on the gym floor to be counted. It was such a big deal to everyone, and everyone was doing something to help. It really was a community built park and it really did bring us all together.
So, my opinion of the park being burnt down is yes, it is extremely saddening, and yes, I do get very angry at who did it, but I think it is all the more reason to get the community back together to build it again the way it was before. If the city does not own it there is not much they can do to rebuild it. This park is the communities, and the community should rebuild it, the way it should be done.
I have a very special tie with Penny Park as well as many others. My mother and father would take me and my siblings back east to Amsterdam, NY to visit our grandparents. Every time we went we would walk up this big hill to this huge wooden playground that had this huge hippo mouth you could run through. We kids loved going to that park. That park was one of the parks designed by Bob Leathers, and made by the community, the man who designed Penny Park. I was only around 5 years old at the time when my mother began researching the park and presented it to two of her close friends, Gwen Owens, and Janet Hamill. These three women did their research in order to build a Robert Leather's community park here in Silver, because of the lack of good parks. More and more people stood by them and with everyone's help the park was able to get started. Bob Leather's came to Silver City stayed in my home for weeks to plan the best park Silver City ever saw.
Those times were so beautiful. I remember every day I was there at the park along with plenty of other children brought by their parents every day. We all helped out in some way. The community came together to build something worthwhile and for everyone to cherish. We little kids, though we couldn't do much, would paint pictures, and more inspiring, saved up all of our change to bring to school. Our schools would hold competitions for the class with the most money saved up. Then all that change was taken to my elementary school, Stout Elementary, and laid out on the gym floor to be counted. It was such a big deal to everyone, and everyone was doing something to help. It really was a community built park and it really did bring us all together.
So, my opinion of the park being burnt down is yes, it is extremely saddening, and yes, I do get very angry at who did it, but I think it is all the more reason to get the community back together to build it again the way it was before. If the city does not own it there is not much they can do to rebuild it. This park is the communities, and the community should rebuild it, the way it should be done.
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