I Love Cooper-Young!

Sometimes, a little community is a beautiful thing.  And today, in our little community, a beautiful thing happened indeed.  About three or four months ago, the president of our Cooper-Young Community Association, Debbie Sowell, heard about a non-profit called KaBoom! that "envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America".  Debbie, knowing that our neighborhood school, Peabody Elementary, was in desperate need of a safe, new playground for the 440 preschoolers through fifth graders who attend there, rushed to cobble together an application that she and her team got in just in the nick of time.  And after just about a month of waiting, we found out that we'd gotten it!

And then the work began.  We participated in weekly planning calls, recruited volunteers, held a chili cook-off to raise our portion of the expenses, and just generally counted down the days until March 20th.  And today, it all came together in an amazing fashion.  By 8:30 a.m., the playground site was crowded with more than 200 volunteers ready to get to work.  About half were from Cooper-Young or Peabody, and the rest were sales associates from Home Depot, the corporate sponsor who helps KaBoom! build playgrounds all over the country.  (Let's just say that the next time I need some home improvement items, I will definitely not be going to Lowe's!)

I present to you the new Peabody/Cooper-Young playground . . .



I neglected to get a shot of the site before work got underway, but this was taken pretty early in the day before much work had been done.  The asphalt you see (and you're only seeing about a third of what's there), will be taken up this summer and replaced with grass.  Soccer, anyone?



This was one of our Build Captains.  (I know what you're thinking, and yes, he is a natural redhead!)

That's Josh in the foreground with a wheelbarrow full of cement to pour into the see-saw hole.

Even Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton made an appearance, proclaiming Cooper-Young "the best neighborhood in Memphis"!  Also pictured (L to R) are Robin Mayweather, PTA President, Kongsouly Jones, Peabody Principal, the aforementioned amazing Debbie Sowell, and Natalie Proffitt, KaBoom! representative extroardinaire.



Mandy and Ginger, Volunteer Recruitment Co-Chairs, at your service!



The final group shot of all the volunteers -- 200 exhausted, but happy people.

I neglected to get a final shot of the completed site, but only because Josh and I were rushing off to close on our loan.  A loan for what, you may ask?  Well, because Cooper-Young is such a great place to live, as evidenced by today's events, all the great neighborhood amenities like restaurants and shops within a few blocks of our front door, and especially our fabulous neighbors, we've decided to add on to our house and stay here for a good long while.  Construction starts tomorrow.  Stay tuned for pictures of the excavator in the backyard.



Cooper-Young can look forward to many more years of impromptu jam sessions on the Spickler front porch.