SPECIAL PLACE FOR SPECIAL CHILDREN

Publish date: 2024-08-06

For most children, the playground at Falls Road Park in Potomac offers a chance to clamber up a jungle gym and coast down an enclosed slide, ride a seal suspended on a spring or whirl around on a merry-go-round until the whole park spins by in a green blur.

But for 5-year-old Hadley Kramm, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, the park presents seemingly insurmountable challenges.

A six-inch-high wood beam runs around the perimeter of the playground. Once her wheelchair is lifted over that barrier, she is met by a terrain of wood chips and dirt that hinder the chair's wheels. Except for riding in a baby swing in which she barely fits, Hadley can only smile and wave at her able-bodied sister, Sarah, 8, who hops from tire swing to monkey bars.

After several seasons of watching the disparities between her daughters become even more accentuated when they tried to play together at parks in Montgomery County, Shelly Kramm developed a plan to transform the Falls Road Park's modest playground into an oasis for children with disabilities, including the blind and the learning disabled.

In a one-woman crusade over the last year, she has rallied the support of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to let her replace the inaccessible playground with a three-quarter-acre one that would include a play pirate ship, a frontier village and a castle.

After a countywide search for a level site large enough to accommodate Kramm's design, the commission chose Falls Road Park, which would be called Hadley's Park. That the site is a mile from Kramm's Potomac home is only a coincidence, both Kramm and the commission said.

Although the park agency will donate the land, Kramm now must raise $500,000 to develop the playground and to buy and install the play equipment and the special rubber surface made of recycled tires that would allow easy wheelchair access to the entire playground and cushion children's falls.

It would be one of the most comprehensive playgrounds of its kind in the country, said Kramm, who has a background in interior design and landscape architecture.

"Hadley's life -- and people like Hadley -- is filled with daily medication, blood tests, emergency room visits," Kramm said. "They're always poking and probing at you. I want to give people enjoyment."

Undaunted by the task, Kramm printed glossy brochures about the playground to solicit money. She incorporated the project as a nonprofit organization and enlisted an influential board of directors. She hopes to have enough money to begin the three-month construction of the playground next summer.

Donations from Potomac Electric Power Co., ITT Corp. and other corporations and individuals have put Kramm part of the way to reaching her goal; she is planning a series of fund-raisers and is selling $50 inscribed bricks that are to line the walkway to the park.

Del. Mark K. Shriver (D-Montgomery), introduced a bill in the state General Assembly's last session that would have earmarked $250,000 for Hadley's Park. The bill failed, but Shriver said he plans to try again next year.

"The playground is an exciting new concept for both the county and the state, and I think we have a very good chance for obtaining the funding next year," said Shriver, who also is on the board of Hadley's Park. "The park will give handicapped children the opportunity to play and interact with those who aren't disabled and open new doors for all of them."

Children in wheelchairs would be able to enter all the play areas; special transfer stations for those who can leave their wheelchairs would allow them to hoist themselves into the low-slung equipment.

The pirate ship would include a tactile globe with raised continents and swirls of ocean for blind children to explore with their fingertips, as well as pirate games on panels that children could play while in their wheelchairs. Children could be wheeled right up to the ship's bow on a rubberized, mottled blue surface designed to look like the ocean strewn with gold coins and could continue onto a gangplank designed to safely accommodate wheelchairs.

In addition, the playground would offer able-bodied children a chance to interact with those with disabilities and give parents of disabled children the opportunity to meet those who share their challenges. It also would allow parents in wheelchairs to take their children to a playground.

In her quest to design the perfect playland for disabled children, Kramm built on her disappointment with local parks. A few have rubber surfaces near one or two pieces of equipment, and several have Braille signs.

"Some of the playgrounds have ramps leading to the equipment, and we'd get to the top and say, Now what?' There was nowhere to crawl or hand grips to help steady you," Kramm recalled.

Ellen Masciocchi, the access planner for the Maryland-National Park and Planning Commission, acknowledges the difficulty Montgomery County's 14,000 children with physical and mental disabilities have at most local playgrounds.

However, she said, many parks do offer limited facilities for the disabled. Mill Creek Town in Gaithersburg and Edgewood Local Park in Silver Spring have larger areas to accommodate children with a range of disabilities, she said. "Hadley's Park is designed on a far larger scale than anything we now have in Montgomery or Prince George's counties," Masciocchi said. "Five years ago, when we started building Mill Creek Town, we were just taking a stab in the dark about what would work."

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, new playgrounds must feature accessible components, but the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board is still writing guidelines. Final rules, expected next year, likely will include requirements about the proportion of equipment that must be accessible and how much special surfacing must be included to smooth the way for wheelchairs.

A park similar to the one planned in Potomac opened in Bowie four years ago. Designed by the mother of a 7-year-old boy with spina bifida, Opportunity Park is jampacked nearly every day with children from all over the Washington area, said Mary Johnson-Self, who created the park. "I really like to see the adults who use the park, the ones who never had a chance when they were young," she said. "Montgomery County really had a big need for a park like this."

And Kramm doesn't plan to stop with Hadley's Park. Using it as a model, she wants to take her campaign for accessibility nationwide, moving next to creating similar playgrounds in Virginia and Washington.

"What I'm doing is like creating a reverse world," she said. "The playground is primarily designed for children with disabilities, but it will be there for everyone to enjoy, instead of the other way around.

"It would be so nice to give those kids a world of their own, but where everyone else could visit." CAPTION: At left, Sarah Kramm, 8, plays alone as her parents watch over her disabled sister, Hadley, 5, at Falls Road Park. Below, Shelly Kramm holds her daughter Hadley as Sarah swings on a set. CAPTION: Shelly and Kenny Kramm prepare to take their 5-year-old daughter, Hadley, home after a visit to Falls Road Park.

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SPECIAL PLACE FOR SPECIAL CHILDREN