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Winchester residents threw their support behind a fundraising drive by the Friends of Winchester Recreation and Community Services this past fall to maintain the upkeep of the Stone Family Playground at Ginn Field.
The Friends held a matching campaign following a $49,000 donation by the Winchester Neighbors Club.
Lauren Herrmann, president of the Friends, said the Winchester Neighbors Club formed in 2009 to initially restore the playground. In June 2011, the group reached its goal and gave the town the money to build a brand new playground.
In a Wordpress post, one of the WNC members said the new playground wouldn’t open until “Winchester finished its flood mitigation project of widening the Aberjona River.”
In October 2012, the playground was finished and dedicated in memory of Laura Stone Mortimer, Charlotte Mortimer, Thomas Finn Mortimer V and Ragna Ellen Stone, who were murdered by Thomas Mortimer in June 2010 inside their Windsong Lane home. Thomas Mortimer pleaded guilty to the crime in October 2012 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The WNC initially kept its committee together to raise funds to maintain the playground.
“They held a fundraiser to replace all the apparatus,” Herrmann said, of WNC’s initial involvement. “Fast forward 13 years and that playground has gotten a lot of usage. Plus there’s been a lot of vandalism at night. It gets dark back there.”
Broken picnic tables, damaged fencing, apparatus that was no longer safe, new landscaping and a need to renovate the bath house were all on the Friends wish list for fixing the area.
Herrmann said an application for $56,000 in ARPA funds was filed with the town, but it wasn’t enough to fix all the problems.
“We were looking to install a new We-saw, but that was $29,000,” she added.
Herrmann said the Select Board finally stepped in and paid for all the work with ARPA funds. She said the Department of Public Works in summer 2024 went out and cleaned and re-aligned the fencing and replaced the gate.
And all’s well with the Stone Family Playground, right? Wrong.
Herrmann said while the playground looks amazing right now, it will need continual upkeep. And that’s where the WNC comes in.
She said the group recently reached out to the Friends with a proposition.
“The people at the club reached out to us to say that they still had money in their account, but that they just weren’t active anymore,” Herrmann said. “So they were wondering if we would take over the stewardship of the money for the playground.”
That gave the Friends the idea for the matching campaign.
“We want to ensure that [the playground] is kept up for the future,” she said.
Herrmann said the money, which is now in its own account, is specifically designated for the Stone Family Playground in perpetuity. She said the hope is to let the funds build up for future projects.
Herrmann said things may look great now, but with as much usage as the playground gets, by 2029 or 2030, a lot of things might need replacing.
“When it’s time to replace the bigger pieces, hopefully, we’ll have a sizeable chunk for the town,” she said.
Nell Escobar Coakley has been a journalist for more than 30 years. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Gotta Know Medford and editor of Winchester News. She can be reached at editor@winchesternews.org.
