They just couldn’t wait any longer.

The parade of children wrapped the paper chain around the perimeter of the Our Town Our Park playground at Storvik Park on Sunday in preparation for the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony.

The organizers set up the sound system and got their list ready of people to thank.

The rest of the park was crowded with onlookers, who watched as the last bolt was bolted, the last tentacle painted on the octopus and the last hammer picked up and moved out of the way.

But it was late — at least 30 minutes past the 5 p.m. opening promise.

And they just couldn’t take it.

It began with the older kids going in around the back side. Next it was a trickle, a child here, a teenager there. Then hundreds of children in mass ran down the hill like they were an army going to claim what was rightfully theirs.

Within seconds, every swing, every cross bar, pirate ship, ferry boat, tree house, play house and bouncy bridge was taken over.

“They stormed it,” said volunteer Curt Oppel.

Oppel was one of 40-plus members of the steering, fundraising, food and tool committees working for more than a year to build the children’s dream playground.

Throughout the five-day build week the smell of detergent used to soap screws from the children’s area mixed with the scent of cedar chips. The constant buzz of saws, routers and drills failed to drown out the occasional sound of squeals coming from children watching and anticipating.

And at least 1,000 volunteers worked as if their parts were choreographed dances they had practiced for weeks ahead of time. One group routed boards, another sealed them and still another nailed them together to create a tot lot, mountain maze and multiple swing sets.

Still scheduled to go in by summer’s end is a salmon overlaid with fused glass from Johnny Picasso’s, more than 1,000 community decorated tiles, a pavilion complete with picnic tables and a permanent installation of Washington Poet Laureate Sam Green’s poem “Hometown Park.”

It was children throughout the community who designed the park last September with help from consultants from Leathers & Associates. The New York company has helped hundreds of communities like Anacortes build playgrounds with donated materials and funds, borrowed tools and volunteer labor.

Maggie Murphy Santos remembered it was in September 2006 that she asked Sarah Nichols to join her in recreating the area Nichols called “just two sad swings” at Storvik into a children’s dream.

In the year and a half that followed, Santos not only had a baby girl, but the two women became general coordinators of the project. They raised $167,000, more than 50 equipment sponsorships and hundreds of picket sponsorships and pulled together the volunteers needed for build week — the oldest at least 80 years old, the youngest, a 19-month-old who helped scrub tires.

They were parents, grandparents and those without any attachment to kids at all who worked one shift to five full days. As Anacortes Parks Director Gary Robinson said once the opening ceremony started up again, “It is great to live in a community that cares.”

Robinson asked the crowd to join him in giving a “big, fat whoo hooo” to all the people who helped make the project possible and gave a special thanks to Nichols.
“Things don’t just happen. It takes leadership,” Robinson said.

It was Nichols and Santos who spoke last, yelling in unison with the crowd “One, two, three — open!” even through it was close to an hour after the children had already been playing.

“What they (the children) came up with, drew and dreamed, people paid attention,” said children’s committee member Treva King.

And in the end, they were the ones to decide how and when it would open.

“That’s what it’s about,” Nichols said.

See related stories:

Volunteers’ sweat, savvy turn kids’ dreams into palatial playground

Day 1: Boys learn what it takes to build a dream

Day 2: Businesses contribute funding, manpower

Day 3: ‘Watchdog’ one of many hats for volunteer

Day 4: Area restaurants fill park workers’ stomachs

Day 5: Builders scramble with last-minute details

So many helped our town come together to build our park