Turley Publications staff photo by Tim Kane

Tim Hubacz of Brookfield helps assemble guardrails on one of the main platforms during construction of the new playground beside Brookfield Elementary School’s baseball field last Friday and Saturday. His main job, however, was mixing about 40-50 heavy bags of cement for dozens of posthole support beams.

A community builds…

Dozens of volunteers turn out to raise new
playground at Brookfield Elementary School

By Tim Kane

Staff Columnist

BROOKFIELD – If you have ever wondered how the Great Pyramids were built, last Friday’s crew of volunteers building the new Brookfield Elementary School playground provided a glimpse.

What was supposed to take three days of building to complete only took eight hours – minus final ground prep - among two dozen hard working men and women led by Northeast Playground Builders of Braintree. As of press time Wednesday, only the rubber pellet ground surface material remains to be poured.

Last Friday, volunteers brought wheelbarrows, shovels, sledgehammers, wrenches, drills (with plenty of extra bits) and tons of muscle for the huge task. The job began at 8 a.m. sharp beside the baseball field and lasted to dusk, minus a brief 10-minute pizza break.

I had the pleasure of joining this group for the entire day on Friday and learned first hand the many pleasures of mixing upwards of 40 bags of cement into about 25 three-foot-deep postholes. Just ask volunteer Tim Hubacz and his wife, PTO President Mia, how this community editor handled the cement mixer donated by none other than Bill Simpson, Jr. Not too well at all. I dropped an entire unopened bag in the wet mixer while it was running. Suffice to say, Hubacz cemented his crucial role with the quick set early on in the day and I moved on to other work duties, as assigned – like digging the postholes and shoveling dirt.

Then came those cool curved blue monkey bars to install. Perhaps it was the keen awareness of Chuck Trombly, co-owner of Northeast Playground Builders, who noticed the structure being held up for attachment by a group of volunteers was not plumb. A brief discussion ensued with fellow Northeaster Bill O’Neill and whoala – all the monkeys took the bars down for a quick new leveling and plumbing – and a little bending. I would say at least 10 volunteers also took time to offer their own sight-line opinions of the project as well. That is how much this crew cared about achieving perfection. This project was a true team effort from the start.

In a Facebook message sent to me yesterday, O’Neill called the volunteer effort “amazing” – probably one of the best he has ever seen. His company builds about two of these playgrounds each week and relies heavily on volunteer support to help reduce costs. This playground rang in at about $35,000, comprising those cool, twisted sister monkey bars, two different raised landing areas with three single slides attached, several climbing ladders and poles, a long tunnel tube, and a mega triple slide. Though a bit smaller, this contraption definitely rivals the one at Lewis Field. PTO organizers also left part of the old playground beside it in tact, including swings and old school monkey bars.

When we all first arrived, hundreds of playground parts were tightly wrapped in plastic with an equal amount of instructions, washers, bolts, and screws for each component. That all had to be moved outside, unwrapped, and then organized. Dario Camacho of Chicopee and his friend Kristine Miele of Ludlow, who is the elementary school’s psychologist, got the playground component-building award for the day. Meanwhile at the construction site, workers were busy installing the first raised landing area, a critical component of the entire project as everything was built off it. All around that staging and columns, postholes were dug, dozens of large rocks unearthed and moved, cement mixed and poured, and individual components assembled and attached.

The multi-step process of managing cement, holes, plastic and bolts repeated dozens of times until at the very end of the day, the mega triple blue slide – more like a large motorboat - concluded the complicated assembly project.

A forthcoming letter to the editor from the PTO will most certainly thank everyone involved in this project, as space certainly does not allow here. I would just like to say a personal thank you to fellow volunteers who shared a day of hard work, laughter, some well intended jibes, and a strong belief in doing something good for this community.

We should take pride in this playground’s completion. For me, it came on Tuesday when I returned to the site to see Max and Kylee Gold of Brookfield playing on it while their grandmother watched. They had smiles from ear to ear.

That’s what true grassroots volunteerism is all about.

- Tim Kane is executive editor of the Quaboag Current and its sister publication, the Ware River News. He lives in Brookfield with his wife Danielle, where their two toddler sons will attend the elementary school this fall.