Welcome to Unlimited Parenting, where we discuss having children with disabilities or special
health care needs.
My name is Allison and I am here with EIPL's Executive Director, Angela Lindig, and today
we are going to be talking about the 20th anniversary of Adventure Island Playground
here in Meridian, Idaho, and inclusion and accessibility.
So I want to get started by asking you, Angela, can you tell us the history, the story of
Adventure Island?
The story, sure.
The story was a complete accident, as most things are when we do these things.
I was in the car on a road trip with my husband and my two kids at the time who were three
and two, and I was, so 20 years ago, right, longer than 20 years ago because of when the
whole thing started, it was, I was reading a Family Circle magazine.
So that just totally...
You just dated yourself.
Right, completely, yeah, because nobody had phones back then.
You looked at maps and read magazines on road trips.
Those are lost skills now.
Maybe, yeah.
So anyway, I was looking at a Family Circle magazine and there was an article in there
on a playground that had been built back east, and they were describing a family very much
like my own.
They had two kids and one had a disability and one did not, and they had this playground,
and I don't even know if they were part of the creation of it, but they were featuring
this family and they talked about how they had a place where they could all go.
Their child that didn't have a disability could run and play and jump and do the things
that he was typically doing, and their child who did have a disability could totally access
the entire playground.
And I said to my husband, oh, that'd be great if we had something like that here.
And that was kind of the end of the conversation for a little bit, but it kept sticking in
my head.
And just to back up a little bit, my daughter didn't take her first steps till she was almost
five.
Oh, wow.
My son is 16 months younger than her.
So those first five years of their lives were we took Amber to therapy and we took Ryan
to parks because that's what he could do.
And we would take her to parks.
And first, she did start walking with a walker, a little pediatric walker, but those only
go so far at a typical playground.
So we would hit the bark.
Yeah, we hit the bark mulch and then her walker would tip forward and she'd sit down and she'd
be angry.
And it was really kind of depressing, right?
Yeah.
Imagine how frustrating that must have been for her.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
So, you know, it just wasn't anything that we could really do as a family, even though
that bark mulch is considered accessible.
I did not know that.
It's an ADA accessible material.
I trip on that.
It's not good for anybody with a mobility issue, for sure.
I started talking about the playground to people and mostly I was talking about it because,
one, I just thought it was such a great idea.
But two, I thought that perhaps it already existed because aren't there no new ideas,
right?
Because of course, why wouldn't it?
Why wouldn't we want to be inclusive and include everybody?
Must already be out there.
And it turns out it wasn't.
And so time went by and then one day the Idaho Statesman ran an article on another playground
that had been built that was accessible.
And I think it was an indoor playground, just a really small structure, and down in Florida.
And I don't know why they ran that article.
They picked it up from the Associated Press or something, maybe filler space.
But my next door neighbor, a good friend of mine, was a fundraising professional and she
came over to my house and this thing, I think, was $200,000.
And she said, we can do that.
And I said, okay, let's do that.
That's a lot of good energy.
Right.
That's what you needed.
Yeah.
So from there, we gathered people around my kitchen table for brainstorming.
And I cold called people, people who said, oh, so-and-so is interested in parks and so-and-so
is interested in kids.
And I didn't know half the people at my kitchen table.
It was very grassroots.
And the city of Meridian got involved very quickly because former Mayor Tammy DeVeard
was on Meridian City Council at the time.
And she was one of the people that I was told I should talk to because she was very interested
in parks and recreation for, and just families in Idaho.
We brainstormed, and then from there, we held focus groups and did big dreaming and design
meetings, which was really entertaining.
My husband and I, in a recent clean out of our garage, found the big poster boards.
We equipped everybody with big poster boards and construction paper and tape and glue and
markers.
What a time capsule.
Yeah.
We completely designed our dream playgrounds.
That's what we did.
We said, if money is no object and if this equipment doesn't even exist, let's just pretend
it does.
Just put down your dreams.
And that's really where it started.
And then folks started to get involved.
We had the land group, landscape architects were one of the first to jump in and create
an actual design for us based on our dreaming and focus groups.
And from there, we started taking bids on equipment and really, truly designing what
the whole thing would look like.
It turned out that it was $1.2 million.
Slightly over the 200,000, right?
A little tiny bit more.
And it wasn't easy because it was a novel concept for a lot of people to understand
universal design, universal access.
A lot of people thought, oh, that's just that part, that's going to be just for those kids.
And so there was a lot of educating that had to take place.
But it wasn't just that, right?
It was a different time.
This was right around 2001, wasn't it?
Yes.
So when we started, once we got...
So in the year 2000, we really were doing all the dreaming and designing.
We were gearing up for fundraising in 2001.
We were ready to go, had a plan, a strategy.
We've got to raise a lot of money.
We didn't know we had to raise that much money, to be honest, because if I had known that,
I probably would have run for the hills.
Then 9-11 happened.
And then we weren't talking about parks.
We weren't talking about anything as a country, as a world.
We weren't talking about things that seemed so fun, happy.
It was such an awful time that we put everything on hold and concentrated on the things that
needed to be concentrated at that time.
And then by spring, we started to have conversations again.
So in 2002, we started our fundraising around the fall of 2002, and then going into 2003,
we were finally ready to do the main play structure, which we did as a community build.
And again, talk about a different time.
We did all of this with the City of Meridian without attorneys, without any paperwork.
There's no red tape.
No, this was just a group of volunteers and parents coming together in a public-private
partnership on our words, really.
And I will never forget the community build day.
We had over 300 volunteers come out that day.
Wow.
Yeah, it was magical.
That's the only way to put it.
It was magical.
But there were over 300 people, people I didn't know.
They came out in teams.
Everybody got T-shirts.
People divided and conquered.
It was absolutely incredible, and the whole thing was built in a day.
That main play structure, not the whole park, but the main play structure.
And there was entertainment.
We had amazing sponsorships at the time.
It just was, there was food.
There were games for kids.
There was childcare.
That was just beautiful.
How did you do that?
How did you drum up so much excitement?
How did you get...
We had amazing committee members.
People wanted to be a part of this, and that really became evident with the build day.
When we had...
I don't want to start naming names of our...
Because I don't have a list in front of me, but there is actually a rock and a big stone
out there at Adventure Island that lists all of the contributors, people that donated their
time, people that were on the committee, the people that gave big, big donations of funding
to make that happen.
Even the community build day itself took considerable sponsorships.
But I will say, of our other partners, we did have one other main partner, and that
was St. Alphonse's Foundation.
So the City of Meridian, St. Al's, and the volunteer group, along with so many other
people, I've always said one person doesn't just do this.
You have to have a lot of committed people to this process.
And it just came together.
And it didn't feel like it was going to, to be honest.
The day before, the day before, we had not poured the concrete.
So there's a large amount of concrete that must go down before you can put a play structure
on top of it.
And people were asking, do we want to postpone?
Do you want to postpone?
And I said, we cannot postpone.
We have to do this.
At the end of August, we're going to run out of weather.
We've got all these volunteers registered and ready to go.
We have all this ready to go.
We're going to do it.
We poured that concrete at somewhere between 4 and 5 p.m. the night before and held our
breath and crossed our fingers.
Please dry, please dry.
Exactly.
Cure, cure.
And it did.
It did.
We were out there by 630 in the morning and the build started around, I don't know, between
7 and 9.
And that's not a sign.
Yeah, it just was meant to be.
So and then from there, there were a lot of other pieces that still had to go be put in
place.
We have rubberized poured in place surfacing instead of bark mulch.
That though got poured on the last sunny weekend and then it was vandalized.
I know.
Right?
I remember that part of the story.
Well, it wasn't a joyful time.
That's true.
That didn't go on the rock.
No, apparently some teenagers did what teenagers they went in during the night and trampled
over it.
And it was several thousand dollars worth of damage and it delayed the whole grand opening
and everything.
So because then we had to go back in and take it out and repour it.
And so but it was all taken care of.
And then again, volunteers came out and stayed in their campers in the parking lot to make
sure that no one could do it again.
Yes.
Oh, what a community.
Amazing.
It was amazing.
But that delayed the grand opening.
But ultimately, the grand opening was in November of 2004.
So while we did the community build in August and we were ready to go, the grand opening
was in November and it was a cold, cloudy, wonderful day.
And filled with people and kids enjoying the playground.
Yeah, the weather wasn't going to keep people away from the playground, right?
No.
So tell me about Amber on the playground.
How was that?
How was how was watching your daughter access the playground that you had spent all of this
time building?
Well, she she loved she's 28 years old and she still loves it.
But you know, part of that is it's intergenerational.
And so the playground has musical equipment and a water splash pad and a rock climbing
structure.
And then there's a ton of imaginative play.
So the main play structure is actually designed around on one side, it's a spaceship and on
the other side, it's an actual boat.
And then there's the toddler structure across the sidewalk that is a castle.
And so there's there's just so many elements that go into this that made it something that
grandparents and parents and children and everybody could interact.
And so at 28, we still love to go out there.
There's still it's still just as exciting.
But more exciting for me is when I go out there without my family or when I get to see
other people just enjoying that.
And when I get to see I mean, disabilities frequently are hidden, as we both know.
Yeah.
But when you do see people who do have very obvious disabilities, fully enjoying themselves
and having that time with their families and friends to just be that's that's worth everything.
That was the whole two million dollars paid off right in that one moment.
Oh, okay.
What point two million dollars.
Also, it's going to be one of those fish stories every time I say it.
I remember when the park was five million dollars.
It was a 10 million dollar endeavor.
We yeah.
The other very cool thing is we always hoped that we wouldn't have to do that education.
What is that?
Yeah.
You know, universal design.
Who is this for?
Why do we have to do this?
Who needs this?
Does anybody is this really going to impact people?
Do we care?
I had somebody actually say to me one time, this won't shock you.
But they said, I don't know why you'd put all that money into something.
I never see people.
I never see kids with disabilities playing at playgrounds.
I wonder why.
Shocking, right?
So but it did spark a movement.
And we now have universally accessible playgrounds all over our state and not just in Idaho,
but in Idaho, right after ours, there was a volunteer group in Idaho Falls that created
one smaller scale, but universally accessible.
And then Brooklyn's playground is in Pocatello and Coeur d'Alene has increased accessibility
in their parks.
You'll see accessible swings.
That's another thing we do have out there, too.
The big accessible swings, the standard swings, toddler swings, and even a tire swing that
spins because vestibular motion is good for kids.
And also my husband really wanted that.
Which is shocking because he gets really carsick and nauseous.
I don't know why he wants it.
He's seen people enjoy it.
And he was like, no park can be had without this.
That's right.
Yeah.
So it did it.
And then I can say, honestly, the city of Boise now and Meridian have both made it part
of their strategic plan to make all parks accessible to all.
And that is exciting.
Yes.
I also want to circle back and make a distinction that it wasn't EIPOL that built the playground.
It was Angela.
It was Angela and her past.
Yes.
Yeah.
But it was not through any kind of federal funding from EIPOL or an EIPOL dream.
This was before you'd even...
This was before that I was even a part of this organization.
Sure, I am going to throw out a name who gets no recognition whatsoever, but Jennifer Bach
was our right hand.
The two of us really, the community build, she led that whole effort.
I get to be the voice and the spokesperson and the name that people associate with all
of this.
But at the end of the day, like I said, there was no one person, no single person can do
this.
She was so important in the community build and spearheading of getting volunteers and
where are all the people?
Where did they come from?
I can tell you that she and her family are just amazing humans.
And if you need something, they are first in line to say, yep, I'm there.
I'm there to help.
But Jennifer did work for EIPOL right around 2000 to 2000.
I did not know that.
Right?
But then when she had gone to work for EIPOL and she and I actually went to Chicago in
2002 to attend a community build project through an organization called Kaboom.
They did at the time, they do community builds and they taught us by the two of us going
out to that experience and being a part of that, they taught us really what it was going
to take to do it here.
Now we found out later that we were the largest community build ever done in a day.
We didn't really.
Wow.
I know.
At the time in Little Meridian, Idaho, we had like, I think our population was around
40 or 50,000 at the time and we've grown quite a bit.
Right.
So yeah, Jennifer was instrumental in making that happen because she went with me and we
got our hands dirty.
We went out there and built a playground somewhere in Chicago area and the trust, the trust that
the city had in us.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
It was just your average everyday citizen just signing their name to help.
Couple of moms saying, yep, we can do this, but isn't that how it usually goes?
Everything is from the moms.
Or dad, you know, parents.
Yes, the parents.
Parents.
So fast forward 10 years, you build the playground and then you have a huge resource fair.
So not only have you and your volunteers given this playground to the community, you bring
them all back in a celebration with how many vendors and resources did you have?
At the 10 year.
So we did a resource fair a couple of times early on when we were still developing the
playground in fact, because it was, I mean, it took until 2009 to fully build it out,
have all of the components completely done, even grass and trees.
I mean, we, and that's a good point.
I don't even think about that.
Little thing that we didn't, you know, people were asking all the time when there's there
going to be benches and maybe make a contribution.
We'll get benches.
Right.
So anyway, there, it took a while to build out the whole thing.
So we did resource fairs a couple of times early on just to create that awareness.
And then in yes, 10 years ago, we did the 10 year anniversary and resource fair.
There were about 40 booths and.
That's more than any resource fair I've ever had as a parent as a.
Well, we're not, we're about half that right now registered.
So I think we had 19 as of yesterday morning and we are hopeful that we will get closer
to at least 30 resources come and go.
They change over the years.
Some resources are sometimes just small support groups.
Others might be a larger, a therapeutic provider of some sort and everything in between.
So we are really excited about the resources that we have already registered right now,
but there is room.
We will take registrations.
I have room for 40.
We know we can, we've seen it.
We know we can.
We've done it before.
We line the playground with the booths.
We ask those people with tables and chairs.
And then if people have their tents or things like that, that they want to bring to for
some shade, that's great.
They're welcome to do that.
But yeah, we will, we will hopefully get 30 to 40 folks out there and families can just
come and go to from booth to booth, find something that is of interest to them and enjoy the
playground.
It's August.
I think that you don't get too hot, right?
I think that that's very, it's very much your theme.
It's your pattern for this playground has been kind of that idea of we don't forget.
We built it.
There were some setbacks, but we don't forget about it.
Maybe the dream started off a little, I don't know if this is something that is going to
be successful, but I'm not going to give up on it.
I'm not going to forget about it.
There's been resource fairs over the years.
I'm not going to give up.
I'm not going to forget about it.
It was the big 10 year one and now we're talking about coming back for the 20th year and to
have a resource fair.
It's like, you won't let this playground die.
And I don't mean that in a negative way.
I think it's great.
Remember, those of us who forget history are those that are doomed to repeat it.
Why do we have this playground?
Why is it so important?
Why is it a necessity in all of our communities?
And for the new families that are just going out there for the first time today, they don't
know that history, that this was just a couple of moms.
With a magazine and a dime.
Right.
Yeah.
And just because my name's on a rock doesn't mean that we were just these.
Sometimes you see that and you're like, oh, somebody rich must have donated some money.
That was definitely not the case.
It was just...
It was your blood, sweat and tears, not your money.
Yeah.
It was a lot.
And actually that's important too.
The whole committee was volunteer.
We had a paycheck.
None of us doing it had a paycheck.
So it's just...
I tell people all the time that I was the town beggar.
I just ran around asking...
People ran when they saw me.
They said, oh no, she's coming for money.
You were out here cold calling.
I was cold calling people.
It was that important.
And no, we can't forget.
We cannot forget this at all.
It's too important.
Universal access.
It shouldn't be even...
You should never have to even say it.
Right?
It should just be the norm.
And I think we're closer to that.
But I don't want us to forget what it took to get us there.
And I don't want to lose it.
And one of the things that was agreed upon from the get go was that the playground would...
The city would own it and maintain it and keep it accessible into perpetuity.
That was the whole agreement.
They are...
In fact, I've had several meetings with them leading up to this because they are partnering
with us on this event.
And I'm excited that we'll have former mayor Tammy DeVeard talking.
We will have our current mayor, Robert Simison, offering a proclamation that day.
And our parks and rec director will be there to talk.
And they have already said, typically equipment needs to get replaced every 15 to 20 years.
And we're at 20 years on this equipment and it's still holding up pretty well.
But it's probably within about five years or so that equipment is going to need to get
replaced.
And so potentially there may be a need for some fundraising even to make sure that we
are...
And maybe even some...
Maybe not, hopefully not.
But you never know.
As people come and go, there could be a need for some oversight to make sure that it remains
fully accessible.
It doesn't take much for when we're not living it and it's not our personal experience for
us to not fully understand what something needs to look like or be included.
And I say that without...
So going into this project, I only had my experiences.
I had a two and a three year old.
That is not a lot of experience to know what is universal and what is impacting people.
And some of the people that were involved early on, Kelly Buckland, who was our state
independent living council executive director at the time and then moved on to Washington
DC for the national council, I was told to call him and I had never met him.
I did not know that he used a wheelchair and that he at the time had a...
I think his son was three at the time.
Oh, how perfect.
Yeah, we were just talking on the phone and he tells me halfway through the conversation,
well, I use a wheelchair and we don't go to parks as a family because we can't...
If I get stuck or if my child gets stuck at the top of a slide, I can't help them.
Oh my gosh.
Right?
Yeah, I never...
None of us thought...
We didn't think about it.
Perspective.
Exactly.
That's when I was like, whoo, light bulbs.
We've got to make sure this is intergenerational, that we are really looking at people from
a lot of different abilities, disabilities and accessibility.
One time I was giving a presentation to a group and a girl came up to me afterwards,
a woman came up to me and she said, did you know that kids who use Cochlear implants can't
use the vinyl slides, the standard plastic slides?
Really?
It will cause electrocution, shock.
Yeah.
And so I had no idea.
I didn't know.
We were not done.
We had firmed up the whole equipment design, the main play structure design at that point,
but it hadn't been purchased.
It wasn't set.
And so we went back to the city and to the vendor, the playground vendor and said, how
can we shape this to make sure that we have one, at least one metal slide so that kids
with Cochlear implants can access the slide?
And it's hard to find metal slides these days, right?
Right.
And they've been deprecated.
Well, because you definitely need to make sure that they're not in the blazing sun,
right?
I mean, those of us who grew up several years ago know all about metal slides and making
eggs and cook on those cars, right?
So anyway, we did.
So I learned so much about playgrounds and fall zones and you have to have this much
room for a slide to be able to have a landing point.
And so anyway, there is in fact a metal slide at Adventure Island as a result of that.
So we don't know anything more than our own experiences.
So we want to make sure that as we move forward, if there is new equipment, if there are new
people that we don't lose that fully universal accessibility.
Because people might look at it and think, well, oh, a metal slide, it's time to update
that.
And they might think that or they'll think, well, do we really need all this?
This has got to be accessible.
I have been to parks where they did an amazing job trying to make them more accessible, but
missed the mark.
And I've looked at that and thought, oh, what's the phrase that we use?
Nothing about us without us.
Someone didn't get asked.
Somebody didn't get asked.
Yeah.
So there are people who live it who have the experiences for their input.
And then you work around that.
Doesn't mean you're going to have everything.
Universal design doesn't mean that all portions are accessible to all people.
That's not what universal design is.
It is that they are accessible to all people in some way.
Yeah.
It's the same.
We have escalators and stairs and elevators.
Everybody can get to the top floor in whatever modality they need.
Yeah, perfect.
Yeah.
I think that that is one of my favorite parts of your story is that not only did you give
this wonderful gift to the community, but how much you learned in doing it.
Well, and then I landed here.
Is that how you got here?
I think so.
Yeah.
Yes.
After getting involved in the playground, I started serving on various committees.
And one of the committees that I got invited to apply to be a part of was the State Independent
Living Council.
Go figure.
And so I was involved in that council for six years and I was the council chair and
really learned about independent living and accessibility from so many amazing mentors
and self-advocates and other parents and just partners in the community that it moved me
into my work here in working with families.
That was 15 years ago.
Wow.
This summer.
So just as the playground finished in 2009, I came to work at EIPL as we were wrapping
up and two years later I became director here.
We've all been better off for it.
Oh, thank you.
I'm not getting any monetary benefit from saying that.
Not for saying.
I wanted to see if you could tell us when we can come and celebrate adventure.
Sure.
I live next.
Yes.
Well, every day, right?
We can go every day and celebrate.
It's a public park.
You can go every day.
If you're in the area, please go.
It's a Meridian-Eustic Roads in Meridian inside Meridian's Settlers Park.
August 24th from nine to two is the resource fair throughout that day.
But after two, we stop at two because we know that we're going to run into some potential
of it getting hot.
Right.
And with the air quality right now, we'll know.
Let's hope it's all better by then.
Oh, it will be.
Right?
It'll be great.
It's the end of August, right?
At noon, we're going to pause and just do a little celebration.
As I mentioned before, we're going to have some people speaking.
I'll probably repeat some of what I just said and thank some people.
And then the two mayors will be speaking.
And we may be also hearing from a family who's had some kids that have had the opportunity
to grow up there who were not necessarily even a part of the beginning.
So you'll see us there.
EIPOL will obviously be there.
The whole team is going to come out in droves to celebrate this.
So we hope you come.
We hope you see us there.
But if you miss us, because maybe you're vacationing that August, just know that EIPOL will be
here day in and day out.
Yeah, we're here every day, too.
Well, we're not here on the weekends.
So go play at the playground on Saturday and Sunday and then call us.
Call us on Monday.
Okay, yeah.
Thank you so much, everyone out there for listening in and know that if you are in Idaho
or planning on moving to Idaho and have questions on systems or services for children with disabilities,
please consider reaching out to us on our website at EIPOL Idaho.
That's I-P-U-L Idaho dot org.
Or by calling us at 208-342-5884.
Be sure to tune in next time.
Until then, this has been Unlimited Parenting.
Thanks for listening.