Fun for all: a California duo builds playgrounds for children of all abilities - Making a Better West; Shane's Inspiration founders Catherine Curry-Williams and Tiffany Harris create universally accessible play environments

Sunset, Sept, 2003 by Lisa Taggart

Shane's Inspiration, a playground in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, has just about everything a kid needs to have a good time. There's a play structure resembling a rocket ship. Swings, some with simple seats and others with straps, stand next to a sandpit that's stocked with digging toys. Nearby, a panel spells out "I feel good" in English and braille.

Feeling good is what Shane's Inspiration is all about. It's also revolutionary--the first universally accessible playground in the West.

Opened in 2000, Shane's Inspiration exists because of Catherine Curry-Williams and Tiffany Harris, friends and fellow actresses who had produced plays together. In 1997, Curry-Williams's first child, Shane Alexander, was born with spinal muscular atrophy. He lived only 14 days.

A few months after her son's death, Curry-Williams read about a woman in West Hartford, Connecticut, whose child had the same disease as Shane. Amy Jaffe Barzach had built a playground in her child's memory and started a nonprofit organization to promote universally accessible play environments.

"It felt like God saying, 'Here's something to get you out of your bed,'" Curry-Williams says today. She and Harris discovered that the city of Los Angeles did not have a single fully accessible playground, leading them to ponder how they might bring Barzach's concepts out West.

A place where everybody can play

The difference between playgrounds equipped with a single wheelchair ramp and what Harris calls truly "playable" structures can break a child's heart. "A ramp would lead to nowhere," Harris says, "just getting kids closer to the things they can't play on. That closes the door on playing with other children."

Together, she and Curry-Williams raised $1 million to build Shane's Inspiration, forming a nonprofit by the same name along the way. The goal was to integrate able-bodied and disabled kids in a 2-acre world of play trains, castles, ships, and dinosaurs.

Visit the playground and you will see that their plan has worked. Children, says Harris, "are all just there playing at the park--there are no special sections."

Curry-Williams and Harris had stumbled upon a vast need. After the opening, the nearby community of Westwood asked the duo for assistance in building another playground. With help from the family of Aidan Gaffney, a local disabled boy, they raised $900,000. The playground was christened Aidan's Place when it opened, months after its namesake passed away.

The two are now helping to build more than 40 playgrounds, including 21 in Los Angeles and others in cities from San Diego to Mumbai, India. Barzach describes the women's efforts as "superhuman."

Today, Curry-Williams and Harris have 3-year-old daughters, born five weeks apart. When the girls play together, they often pretend to be moms going off to work.

"Good-bye," Curry-Williams's daughter, Grace, will tell her friend Jade. "I'm going to build playgrounds."

Accessible playgrounds

For more information, contact the Shane's Inspiration office: 4804 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Ste. 542, Valley Village, CA; (818) 752-5676.

Aidan's Place. Westwood Recreation Complex, 1350 Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

Corona-Norco Family YMCA. 1331 River Rd., Corona, CA; (909) 736-9622.

Shane's Inspiration. 4800 Crystal Springs Dr., Griffith Park, Los Angeles; (818) 752-5676.