week of 4/24/02
 
 
 
  A monument to community spirit
By Scott McLeod
At some point last Sunday afternoon, I realized how the pyramids — a seemingly impossible and gargantuan task — were built.

They teach you in writing classes a good story has to have dramatic tension, some struggle and conflict, something to move it along. Well, the only thing that moves this story along is pure, boundless community spirit. Like a great book, it’s one story that is a couple of handfuls of smaller stories held together by a common thread. Best I could tell, that common element was simple community spirit, a super-charged-feel-good kind of group momentum that just kept building until Sunday at 6:30 in the evening.

The big story is this: 1,750 people volunteered for five days in Waynesville and built a playground. So many people showed up that at one point Sunday afternoon one of the construction foremen was scratching his head trying to find work for everyone.

“I’ve got to walk around and come up with a few jobs for you guys, just hang here,” Dana Cavanaugh told about six men who were wearing tool belts and had pencils stuck behind their ears, men who were peering anxiously from sawdust covered faces topped with ball caps, men who had the adrenaline of doing something good coursing through their veins. Cavanaugh knew he had better find work fast.

“I don’t remember ever being this close to finished this early on a Sunday,” Cavanaugh said.

“How many of these have you built?” one man asked.

“About 200,” came the answer.

“But it’s the first one you ever built in Waynesville,” the suspendered man shot back, not cracking a smile.

And so it was as men, women, and children from all walks of life came together to build a special playground. Tens of thousands of dollars were contributed toward the project, but it was the energy that was contagious. Again and again, the story came of people intending to work a few hours and coming back each day.

On any one of those days the construction site resembled a kind of organized chaos. Imagine pre-schoolers souped up on Mountain Dew and candy bars while doing an art project, and the frenetic scene might begin to take shape. But amid that chaos, the playground was going up.

“It was sort of chaotic,” said Larry Leatherwood, the volunteer project manager. “But our construction captains kept things going. They were great, here every day and just going nonstop.”

Speaking of commitment, Leatherwood, who has already wrapped up a 30-year career in education, has rightfully earned himself some kind of “Local Legend” designation. But try getting him away long enough to give him the prize. On Monday afternoon he was still there, still bathed in sawdust, still talking, still working, still praising the community spirit. The picture of him standing on a stepladder, chainsaw in hand, eyeing the project is fixed in my mind.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told me Monday, which is the same thing many people were saying about him.

It’s called the Kiwanis Community Park because they were the first to pony up $25,000. And you thought all they did was put up flags on Main Street and get together a few times a year to watch travel videos. In addition to the money, there was an army of Kiwanis Club members working the project. This group has more good deeds behind them than a brigade of brownies.

And the list goes on and one. School groups, children, church and civic clubs, Haywood Community College students, businesses, individuals, etc., etc. Libba Feichter was on the organizing committee and she was still there on Monday also, still smiling, the energizer bunny of the project. I never got their names, but the couple managing the tool trailer were also still around, as were others. The spirit was still moving people.

Tim Plowman took his time to get the train right. The original plan was flawed, so Plowman spent hours until he put together an engine rendition any carpenter would be proud of. Seeing as where I have a train freak for a son, I am personally thanking him for the effort.

The Main Street, which gives the park a unique Waynesville look, included the Haywood County Courthouse. County Commissioner Wade Francis, out there working, had to take the ribbing about that debate finally being settled. It is forever on Main Street. Case closed.

A friend and I were trying to figure out why this project lit such a fire under so many. Yes, the organizers did a wonderful job. Sure, it’s for children. But maybe there’s something else. The past year has been a rough one for us as a country and a community. The admonition to think globally but act locally is a good one, and there seems to be some wave of altruism bubbling to the surface in this country.

In the end, though, it is too complicated to try and put some deeper meaning into a playground project. There is an indescribable power in group efforts like this, and after witnessing it one is left to believe that anything can be accomplished if enough people believe. It’s a simple lesson we will do well to remember.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)