PORT TOWNSEND — Ella Piatt has a special attachment to the aging Jefferson County Memorial Athletic Field park and wants it kept open and in good shape.
The Port Townsend High School senior is an avid girls soccer player who has kicked and charged up and down the green grass of the field for four years.
She wants to make sure other athletes can enjoy the field as she has.
That’s why she and other Port Townsend and Chimacum High School students and athletes showed up Friday at the field threatened by county parks and recreation cutbacks, which is now the focus of an active volunteer effort to maintain and repair the post-World War II Memorial Field off Washington Street downtown.
“It’s because I play here and I see my friends playing on it,” Piatt said, breaking from pounding nails to secure the green wind-damaged fence that surrounds the field.
“I want to make sure other people can play here and watch.”
She was one of about 12 people to turn out for Jefferson County Friends of Park and Recreation’s first “Friday Fixup.”
Chimacum High senior football players Boone Garten and Ryan Riggle also showed up to work. They attended to the field’s trash pickup detail.
“We play football and want this to stay as our field,” Riggle said.
He and Garten plan to recruit other Chimacum students, including other football and baseball players, to join them at the next Friday Fixup, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. May 21.
Volunteers took on some serious jobs Friday, pressure-washing the grandstands, cleaning out the old field’s junk-filled tool shed, repairing the fence and picking up and disposing of trash.
In a cherry picker about 15 feet up in the air, Ron Sparks, an electrician with Frederickson Electric of Port Townsend, rewired and replaced bulbs in the street lamps hanging over the field’s Washington Street entrance.
The work was donated by the company’s founder and president, Erik Frederickson.
Rich Stapf Jr., whose Stapf Construction Co. has signed on with the county to help maintain the field for a year at a work donation amounting to about $25,000, also worked Friday with others to replace sections of the field’s deteriorating fence.
Joe Daubenberger, a Port Townsend developer, said that he volunteered as a way to support his son, Harry, and the Port Townsend High Redskins soccer team.
“I grew up here and I think it’s something we gotta keep going,” he said. “It’s important that the kids have a place to play.”
Matt Tyler, county Parks and Recreation Department director who helped organize the volunteer effort manned a power-washer in the grandstands.
Delighted by turnout
He said he was delighted to see the turnout for the first Friday Fixup.
“It’s great to have this community come out and do maintenance and some of these harder jobs,” Tyler said.
“We couldn’t do it without their involvement.”
Tyler has only one full-time maintenance staffer after the three Jefferson County commissioners cut the equivalent of nearly three positions from his department during budget decision-time last year.
Tyler supervised the event, which was sponsored by the Friends of Jefferson County Parks and Recreation and Rich Stapf Construction Inc.
Also providing support, with fundraising and volunteers, are Port Townsend Rotary, the Port Townsend Paper Company, Port Townsend Kiwanis Club, Port Townsend Boosters, Port Townsend School District, Chimacum Boosters, Chimacum School District and Joe Daubenberger.
Also, the Rakers Car Club, Port Townsend League Baseball Club, Port Townsend Braves Youth Football Club, Frederickson Electric, Sport Townsend, Port Townsend Athletic Club and Hadlock Building Supply.
Fundraising concerts
Friends of Parks and Recreation hope to put on at least one and possible two fundraising concerts a month at the field this summer.
Money raised would not only go to Memorial Field’s upkeep but to the free youth pop-in afternoon recreation program, which was closed late last year for lack of county funding.
Memorial Field is now being used by the Port Townsend Boys Soccer Team, the Port Townsend Junior League Baseball team, and a series of community events are coming up, such as the Medieval Festival and the Rhody Carnival, both scheduled in May.
Major cutbacks
Adopt-A-Park efforts have been filled with volunteers since county leaders last year announced major cutbacks in parks and recreation facilities.
The county late last year cited more than a $100,000 revenue shortfall, and proposed closing four parks and laying off three part-time staff positions.
All volunteers must register for the Friday Fixup program, by phoning Tyler’s office at 360-385-9160.
For more information about park other activities, see www.countyrec.com/info/.
For more information about fundraising concerts, phone Jane Storm, Friends of Parks and Recreation chairwoman, at 360-385-2291.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.