The Playground For EveryBODY In Proctor Completed After Ten Years

PROCTOR, Minn. — Ten years of hard work, donations, and love paid off in Proctor over the weekend.

The name may say it all, The Playground for EveryBODY.

The start came when Jennifer McDonald’s daughter Emma went to regular parks. With Spina Bifida, she could get to a playground using her walker, but then was limited by everything from woodchips bogging down her walker, to equipment she could not reach or use.

This is how wonderful it looked after a lot of work culminated over the weekend, but ten years ago, the first phrase was a small and humble beginning. For a mother, the transformation and what it means is almost beyond words.

Jennifer McDonald said, “Just seeing it come together when we dug over one hundred holes Wednesday and then put those black posts in, and then they all were up, it was just like a forest of poles. And I looked at the playground builder and he’s like ‘This is it. It’s here!’ When Emma came on Saturday after the torrential rain, um, she looked at it, and the look on her face…and I’m just like, ‘Welcome to your playground girl.’ We worked so hard for this. So it’s really emotional for me. It’s my baby. It’s a project I worked hard on and kept committed and recommitted, and multiple grants I’ve written just to get to the point of having enough to get this up. And so, I can’t believe it’s here.”

McDonald cited dozens of people, community groups, foundations, and organizations that all stepped in to help in countless ways over the past ten years.

She says there are more than 3,000 children in the region with impairments and disabilities who need a playground like this.