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New Forest Park playground is for all
By Clay Barbour
FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS SATURDAY 9-year-old Libby Schueddig was just
another kid at the Playground.
She climbed monkey bars with abandon, plummeted down slides without fear
and rode swings to near atmospheric heights.
At no point did her spina bifida get in the way of her fun.
"She has always had to sit around and wait while the other kids had their fun,
"said Amy Schueddig, Libby's mother.
"She's always been so patient. But today, today she can go at it like all the other kids."
Libby, of St. Louis, was one of more than 200 people who attended Saturday's opening
of the $2 million Dennis and Judy Jones Variety Wonderland, Forest Park's new "all-inclusive"
playground, across the street from the Dwight Davis Tennis Center.
Three years in the making, Wonderland represents the future of playgrounds across
the country. It is the first public playground in the city of St. Louis accessible to children
with disabilities, and on Saturday it attracted people from neighboring counties.
St. Charles resident Lisa Portilla said she'd been waiting eagerly for years. On
Saturday, she brought her son, Greg, 9, and her daughter Katie, 12.
Greg has cerebral palsy. He suffers from life-threatening seizures and is considered
fragile. By 11 a.m. Saturday, Greg had spent two hours on the playground and was
exhausted. And happy.
"We got him up on that saucer swing and he actually let out a belly
laugh," Portilla said. "He is not very verbal, so that was just amazing. He just loved it."
Wonderland features 29 pieces of equipment separated into six sections. The
ground is spongy soft, to protect against falls; the slides are concave to help
prevent accidents; and ramps allow people of varying abilities to access all the equipment.
"We wanted this to be a place open to all children," said Jan Albus, executive
director of St. Louis Variety, a charitable organization that specializes in children
with needs. "The most important thing was that it make it so children with disabilities
could play right along with all other children."
That vision came true Saturday. The park was filled with children. The only
clue that some of them had special needs were the wheelchairs parked off to the side.
Before Libby left the park Saturday, she climbed aboard the saucer-shaped
swing with her two brothers and two cousins. The smile on her face mirrored the
one on her mother's.
"Look at her," Schueddig said, "Just one of the gang."
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