Word: playground
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...lived about 12 feet below me,” writes Benitez in an e-mail. “That’s providence for you.” Three years later, the couple is engaged after a nervous proposal in a children’s playground. “After getting down on one knee and popping the question, I started taking her glove off,” Benitez writes. “Too bad it was her right hand.”Benitez writes that their future plans are mainly focused on marriage, and that neither are certain about...
...everybody ready out there?" came the cry. Then the countdown: "Five! ... Four! ... Three! ... Two! ... One!" And a jubilant roar: "We did it!" In the glow of a Florida sunset, a herd of screaming children stampeded into Indian Harbour Beach's just completed playground last month and began scrambling over the turreted fortress of mazes and bridges, slides and ladders, tire tunnels and sand-boxes. As the youngsters gamboled, beaming parents and teachers stood along the periphery, exchanging handshakes and hugs...
...deep into mitten weather may envy those who are scampering around a Florida playground dressed in shorts and T shirts this time of year, but, after all, these folks earned it. For five days, more than a hundred volunteers at Ocean Breeze Elementary School sawed wood, dug holes, hammered nails and tightened bolts. Come nightfall, they still toiled, aided by a fire truck's flood-lights. At the hub of the commotion, sagging tool belt at waist and diagrams in hand, was Architect Robert Leathers, 45, the Johnny Appleseed of the swing set. Over the past 15 years, Leathers...
Leathers' genius for organization became apparent on the first day of construction, when he roamed everywhere on the site, calmly answering questions and giving advice. Teams of workers built the playground section by section, assembling the numbered pieces of wood as they would a giant jigsaw puzzle. Age did not seem a barrier: Henry Stiles, 71, a retired maintenance worker, dispensed the tools collected by volunteers (including 15 rasps, 30 saws and 25 shovels), while a group of first-graders sanded wood. Tiffany Greenis, 8, carried trays of apples and carrots to workers, while her mother Lynn picked up fresh...
...playground slowly took shape, the pace quickened. Sometimes bad weather or ebbing enthusiasm can delay the work, but the Ocean Breeze project was free of such annoyances. By midafternoon of the fifth day, Robert Becker, 26, was delivering a final batch of sand in a borrowed backhoe, while Gary Craycroft, who had last hung swings for his baby daughter Penny, now put them up with her help. Said Penny, 14: "It's been neat. I'll never forget working at night with the lights on." But Leathers is out to impress the adults as much as their children. "They start...