OUR VIEW LOGO (NEW)

“When, under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours of Feb. 9, someone torched the Olsrud Family Community Playground at Bear Creek Park in Medford, the act did more than destroy a portion of a playground.

“It hurt our kids.”

— Our View, Rogue Valley “Tribune,” Feb. 17, 2023

A year after a still-unknown arsonist broke the hearts of children, and the adults who had come together as a community to add a place of joy to their lives, the restoration of spirit will have begun.

Last week’s unanimous vote by Medford City Council to award a contract to the playground’s original designers to rebuild what had been taken away so violently is a welcome step in making sense of the senseless.

“This is a hard thing to try to put together,” Councilor Kevin Stine said, “and it’s great we’re going down that road.”

Leathers & Associates, a national company that specializes in custom-built playgrounds, will once again design the facility — which was built by volunteers in 1988, then renovated 30 years later and reopened to the public at Christmastime in 2018.

The fire destroyed rough 20% of the playground area, including a merry-go-round, with portions of an area designed for babies and younger children either destroyed or heavily damaged.

The city received $447,000 from its insurance carrier to help bring the playground back to life, with $390,429.46 awarded to Leathers. The remaining funds will go toward repairing concrete and replacing rubber tiles that were damaged.

The February fire sparked deeply felt emotions in the community — some springing from the random nature of the act, and others based on the lack of security features at the playground.

Rich Rosenthal, Medford’s director of parks and recreation, said the city has already begun the process of making the play area at Bear Creek Park better protected — citing improvements to the area’s lighting.

Security cameras and other features will be installed as the playground is restored, he said. The absence of video footage and poor lighting contributed to the inability to better identify a man with a butane torch seen in the area at the time of the fire.

Pull Quote

The playground … is widely seen as a city landmark that holds a special place in the hearts of generations of Medford residents.

As important as security is to the project, the return of a custom-made playground will go a long way toward healing the wounds suffered that day.

“It’s been emotional for everyone,” Rosenthal said in the arson’s aftermath. “To think of all the effort that went into making something really, really, really great, and in such a collective way. Who possibly could do something like this?’

The playground, named in honor of the philanthropic legacy of Sherm and Wanda Olsrud — owners of Food 4 Less and Sherm’s Thunderbird market, who lived across the street from the park — is widely seen as a city landmark that holds a special place in the hearts of generations of Medford residents.

Work on the renovation could begin as early as this fall, Rosenthal said, although it’s more likely to begin in the first quarter of 2024.

At which time, we hope, the community will rally once again to show that while one man’s actions were enough to destroy a structure, they weren’t enough to snuff out the spirit that built it.