Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
Toll Free: 800-234-6575
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Anne Stultz (center), a former teacher at Martinsville Middle School, and her husband, Dwight, present a check for $394 to Jim Frith recently at J. Frank Wilson Park. Frith is a member of a committee working to raise funds to build a skateboarding park at Wilson Park. Stultz’s former students raised the money seven years ago while working on a class project in support of a skateboarding park. (Bulletin photo by Paul Collins) |
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
By PAUL COLLINS - Bulletin Staff Writer
Part of nearly $57,000 raised this spring in a youth-led effort to build a skateboarding park in Martinsville is $394 with a long history.
The money was raised in 2003 by a group of eighth-graders who saw a skateboarding park as a way to solve a community problem. Members of a gifted class at Martinsville Middle School, the six students knew there was nowhere in the city where youth could skate legally. That meant some were skating in areas that were off-limits.
As part of a class project, the group tried to change that by establishing a skateboarding park.
Among other things, they applied to a skateboarding foundation for a grant, which was denied; sought support from city council but did not receive funding; and raised $394 through a car wash and bake sale, said Anne Stultz, former teacher of eighth-grade gifted students at MMS.
The $394 remained in an account at MMS until recently, when it was donated to the current effort to raise $100,000 by July 31 to build a skateboarding park at Martinsville’s J. Frank Wilson Park.
The $394 has “been sitting there all these years so we can give it to somebody,” Stultz said.
Every year, she divided her gifted students into groups and required each group to identify a community problem, research policies and potential funding, determine how to fix the problem and try to fix it. The idea behind the assignment was to help students “learn to give back to the community — (to learn that) they could make a difference,” Stultz said.
In 2003 one group of students — Josh Torrez, Elizabeth Clark, Ross Tatum, Hunter Stone, Josh Holt and Sarah Crabtree — identified the need for a skateboarding park because of the lack of legal places to skateboard, according to a Bulletin article from the time.
Stultz said that in 2004 another group of her students also proposed as their community service project establishing a skateboarding park. She said she thinks students in that group were Max Chase, Luke Martin, Joe Perotti and there may have been others.
Both years the students did such things as wrote letters to the editor and made presentations to city council, but they did not receive funding, Stultz said.
Jim Frith said he read a letter to the editor written by one of the groups and got behind the youth-led proposal. In the years since then, youths in the community have continued to try to drum up support for a skateboarding park, and Frith and others have talked up the idea with governmental and school system officials and people in the community, he said.
Currently several youths serve on the steering committee that is spearheading the effort to raise funds to build a skateboarding park. Frith, Martinsville Parks and Recreation Director Gary Cody and several other people are on the committee.
Currently close to 10 youths, ranging from high school age to 22, are involved in the effort, Frith said. Youths designed the skateboard park, which will be built on the tennis court at J. Frank Wilson Park.
The fund drive was announced May 10, with $15,000 in funding already raised, including $5,000 from the Tony Hawk Foundation. That’s the same skateboarding foundation that MMS students had applied to years earlier.
Stultz said she is pleased and excited her former students who proposed a skateboarding park are seeing their work come to fruition.
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Luke Martin, one of Stultz’s former students. “We heard no our whole lives. It’s surreal right now,” he said.
Martin, now 19, of Chatmoss, is a rising junior at Virginia Tech. He recalled he and his friends getting stopped by police when they skateboarded in parking lots uptown. “We kept doing it” and some of his friends got tickets, he said. He also recalled going to skateboarding parks in such places as Danville, Roanoke and Kernersville and Greensboro, N.C. And, he said, “we had to build our own ramps and skate in our own driveways.”
Besides parking lots, young people also were skateboarding on sidewalks and school property and in streets — all against city code, according to Bulletin articles.
Elizabeth Clark, now 20, of Collinsville, said the boys in her group in Stultz’s class were skateboarders who were getting in trouble because of the lack of legal places to skateboard. A skateboard park was the boys’ idea, and she thought it was a good one, even though she wasn’t a skateboarder.
The students in Clark’s group met with Nancy Bell, then grant writer for Martinsville Schools, and applied for a grant from the Hawks Foundation but didn’t receive one, Clark said. The students also did such things as draw up plans for a skateboarding park at J. Frank Wilson Park and make a presentation to the city council, but financially, the city wasn’t ready to take on that type of project, she said.
Without funding and without the go-ahead from city council, a skateboarding park was not feasible at the time, but the students thought it could be done in the future, she said.
“I think it’s great,” Clark, a rising senior at the University of Virginia, said of the current fund drive. She added that a skateboarding park will help keep young people out of trouble.
“(You’ve) just got to dream and things can happen,” said Dwight Stultz. He is Anne Stultz’s husband and owns City Auto Center in Martinsville, where the group of students in 2003 held a car wash and bake sale. “These kids gave up their Saturdays to do this,” he said.
Frith said there were times in the past when city council, trying to be fiscally responsible, was not in favor of a skateboard park because council members were unconvinced skateboarding was a sport and not a fad — in other words, “If we build it, will they come?”
But after strong showings of support by young people, members of city council now support the project, Frith said.
As of Wednesday, the fund drive had reached $56,923.50, said Gary Cody, director of Martinsville Parks and Recreation. He said that includes $10,000 from the city, matched by $10,000 from Henry County. Most of the $56,923.50 has come from donations, he said, noting that he had several pages of donations. Businesses are pulling together to support the skateboarding park, he said.
“The way the economy is, it’s a miraculous effort,” Cody said of the fund drive. “It’s great how the community has come together for our youth, to see this become a reality,” he said.
Equipment for the skateboarding park will cost $75,000, and estimates are being received for the pad preparation, Cody said. He hopes the pad will cost no more than $15,000 to $30,000.
The city council endorsed the skateboarding park in the fall, and Martinsville Parks and Recreation will operate the unsupervised park from daylight to dark, Cody said. |
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