Roundabout Redux: The Restoration of a Homegrown Playground Structure
The Lehane-Levicoff family by the “Roundabout”: Christina, Liam, Emma, and Eric. Photo: Maureen Rutkowski
A well-used wooden structure on the playground of Swarthmore Presbyterian Nursery Day School (SPNDS) was failing. Protruding nails and rotting boards that had to be removed did not stop children from clambering all over its sprawling surfaces, but something had to be done.
“My Papa and Uncle Keith could fix it,” four-year-old Ben Starr told Marjorie Adams, the school’s director. She laughed, thinking, “If Bob only knew what he was being volunteered for!”
Yet that is exactly what happened. Throughout last summer, Ben’s grandfather Bob McCauley led a team of skilled volunteers on Wednesday and Saturday mornings in removing all existing walls and decking, down to the framing, and replacing them with Azek, a composite material with a 50-year warranty. Joining McCauley, a retired architect, were SPNDS parents Ben Cardell, Pete Slootmaker, Aaron Shaver, and Eric Abramowitz; Bob’s wife Peg, a former teacher at SPNDS, along with their grandsons Ben and Jack Starr; Swarthmore Presbyterian Church staff John Hoing and Ben Mutz; and former SPNDS parent Mike Rutkowski.
Mike Rutkowski built the original structure in 2003 from a sketch made by another SPNDS parent, landscape architect Emmy House. The sketch was rough, and the curvilinear design uniquely challenging, with circular windows and multiple arc-shaped platforms built around a sturdy tree.
The reconstruction was not easy, either, and the cost of purchasing materials would have been prohibitive in this pandemic year were it not for Christina Lehane-Levicoff, parent and pediatrician on the school’s Advisory Committee. After attending a committee meeting in which the structure was discussed, Lehane-Levicoff felt compelled to donate the necessary funds to make the project a reality.
At the dedication ceremony held for the school community on October 14, the Lehane-Levicoff family—Christina, Eric, Emma (9) and Liam (6)—read the plaque inscription: “’Life isn’t about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.’ –V. Green. The reconstruction of this beloved structure is dedicated to the SPNDS teachers who selflessly and joyfully taught our children through the COVID19 pandemic.``
The SPNDS teachers are deeply grateful to all those who have given new life to the beloved structure—dubbed “the Roundabout” by the McCauley family—for generations of children to come.
Reisa Mukamal teaches in SPNDS’s morning kindergarten class.
