COLUMN: Everbody calls me Jana Banana

Metaphors are not my forte`, but indulge me for a moment.

Let’s say that you have a son that is a baseball player.

Not just any baseball playing child, this child is fantastic at it, and it’s all he wants to do. When you pitch to him in the back yard, he hits the ball clear out of the backyard, and you just know he’d hit homeruns in the ballpark.

Your whole family enjoys watching him play at home, and in fact, you’ve changed your whole yard just for him to play on. Your family made a baseball diamond in the backyard with bases, built bleachers, and you’d like for him to play with some other kids that like baseball so you invite some other kids that love the sport to come play.

Problem is, there is nowhere in your city for him to play with other baseball loving kids. You know he’d love being on a team, he’s seen them on television.

Your town just doesn’t have such a thing as a baseball field. So, when you are on vacation you take him to some, and he loves it. But at home, your child just sits and watches others play knowing that there is nowhere for him to play and use his special talent. You long for the day that your town will realize that not every kid loves tennis, football, soccer and swimming, that some really love this sport called baseball. But, each time a new park is revamped, they forget to add it. Or maybe the issue came up, but the funding was too great, so it was tabled. Or, maybe even said there were liability issues, so it was not a good idea to have this in our city.

Now, here’s the kicker: what if you substituted “child with special needs” or “child who uses a wheelchair for mobility” into that paragraph? And instead of building a baseball diamond with bleachers, you modified your home with wider doorways, a ramp and an accessible bathroom. Your child can get around pretty well at home, at school, but when it comes to actually playing outside with other children and their siblings, there is just no where to go. You’ve seen great parks on television and in publications, and when you’ve traveled you actually have been and all your children loved it. A park with equipment specifically designed for wheelchairs, cool ramps to play on, and you notice that even toddlers and mothers with strollers enjoy this special equipment, and it’s a park for all children.

Imagine you are the parent of such a child, and you’ve heard about a great restaurant that you’d like to try. You maneuver your way inside, and can push your child up to the table, but then the inevitable happens…they have to use the bathroom. For any other parents this is no big deal, you just walk them into the bathroom.

For a parent with a special needs child, this is a moment of panic when you are wondering if this restaurant actually followed the Americans with Disabilities Act and constructed wheelchair accessible bathrooms.  And sadly, some did not. 

Years ago when I was working at the Darlington County Disability and Special Needs Board, I talked to families with children and adults with special needs, and they all wished for some special places for children and adults that were wheelchair accessible.

Now, years later, I asked the question on Hartsville Today, “Something Byerly Park Needs,” and I received a delightful phone call from Nancy Myers, who on her own has been researching and dreaming about this for years.

We talked for nearly two hours and great ideas began to come forth: wouldn’t it be wonderful to have playground equipment installed at Byerly Park, Pride Park and Lawton Park? And wouldn’t it be great if the new Vista area had a special area for an all children’s park like Surfside Beach where children of all abilities can play side by side? Wouldn’t this be yet another way to show our community that we love all our children and to our visitors that we are a progressive community that welcomes visitors from all over to come let their children play here? 

Perhaps groups, businesses and individuals could donate a piece at a time, and we could have signs designating that these “playground angels” donated this slide, this ramp, this elevated sandbox, this set of overhead rings and bars for upper body strength. It’s just a dream right now, but Nancy is meeting with me to share her research, and we are going to start asking for advice and support from the community. If you’d like to join us in our quest for all children to play, please contact me at .