A playground for everyone

Mallory Carper was a Mountain Brook graduate who loved fishing and hunting. She skied — both in water and in snow — and was an excellent rifle shot. She was an avid scuba diver. She also used a wheelchair.

“She was born with spina bifida,” said her father, Charlie Carper. Spina bifida is a birth defect that occurs in the womb when the spinal column doesn’t close completely. It’s one of the most common permanently disabling birth defects in the country, according to the Spina Bifida Association.

“She had a lot of surgeries that she had to go through as a part of spina bifida,” Carper said, estimating she underwent between 12 and 13 operations. “The last surgery we went into was fairly routine, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

Carper said doctors believed an embolism — a sudden blocking of an artery — hit Mallory’s heart or lungs.

“That ended the game,” Carper said. Mallory Carper died September 2016.

Fast forward a few months to February 2017, and Carper and his wife Jan were approached by Mallory’s godparents, Bill Crow andPride Forney. 

Crow and Forney, along with fellow godparent Ellen Walker, wanted to talk about an idea they had to raise money for a bench at Overton Park in memory of Mallory. Overton Park holds a special place in their hearts as they have lived near there for many years and Mallory frequented the park when she was younger. One week later, on the evening of Mallory’s birthday, they met again.

“Bill said, ‘We have a problem,’” Carper recalled. “‘This thing has gone viral, and instead of $2,000, we’ve raised almost $20,000.’”

It was a fortunate problem to encounter, but because park benches do not cost $20,000, it was a problem nonetheless. So they decided to put the funds toward outfitting the park with equipment for kids with disabilities or who use wheelchairs.

After spending months reaching out to local organizations such as The Exceptional Foundation and Mitchell’s Place to learn more about ideal playground equipment for children with disabilities or on the Autism spectrum, they were ready to present their ideas to the Mountain Brook City Council on June 26.

Carper said Shanda Williams with Parks and Recreation immediately began helping their cause, but he still found he was “a nervous wreck.” 

“I thought I was going to go in there and they were going to say, ‘Nah, we’re not going to do that.’ And they went right along with it,” he said.

Council members approved three pieces for the park. The first piece is a sensory wave.

“It looks just like an arch-looking thing that kids can climb on, but the cool thing is it has six sensors on it, three on each side,” Carper said. They play to the tactile, visual and auditory senses and allow kids to touch or turn each sensor to reveal a different effect.

The other two pieces are a spinning seat on a ball bearing with a harness that allows the kids to spin and a set of melody chimes set at a 45 degree angle so wheelchair users are able to access them. 

“I’m really excited about it because people like Mallory that can’t use a regular playground are now going to have some pieces that they can use,” he said. “Instead of sitting with their hands folded in their laps, they can actually go out and play.”

Carper said that in addition to the new equipment, a sign with Mallory’s motto, “I aspire to inspire before I expire,” also will be placed in the park, opposite of Cam’s Corner. That area recognizes Cam Cole, a 3-year-old who loved the fire station near Overton Park and died unexpectedly in 2013.

“What we want to do is respect the Cole family and Cam’s memory. We put everything at the other end of the playground to keep from encroaching on his space,” Carper said. 

While the new additions will help children in the area, the project has also helped Carper and his family after Mallory’s death. 

“You’re in the depths of grief, you’re hurting pretty bad, and you’re just trying to get through the day,” he said. “And all of a sudden, you’ve got this …thing, thinking, ‘Oh, this could be really cool.’” He said it forced him and his wife to talk about everything, and it became an exciting and challenging task, albeit sad.

“It’s a daily reminder that Mallory’s nothere,” he said. 

Carper added his experience with the community throughout this project has been “very, very humbling,” and he recognized that it wasn’t a few people that gave a great deal of money, but many people who gave smaller donations. 

“The whole thing is really overwhelming … It’s very humbling that so many people would care so much about Mallory, so much about our family, that they would be willing to do something like this in her memory,” he said. 

And Mallory? 

“I think she would be absolutely overwhelmed …  It’s something she truly would’ve gotten a kick out of,” Carper said. “Because she was the one who sat there with her hands folded in her lap and watched the other kids play.”