We will always be grateful to Skip Priest for his crucial role in making our vision of an expanded playground in Celebration Park a reality. As three former Parks and Recreation Commission members, we knew the original playground was inadequate. We knew what we wanted, but couldn’t figure out how to make it happen.

Through the fall of 1999 and most of 2000, we brain-stormed ideas about how to achieve our goal. We finally came up with the idea to beautify the park’s entry road with banners, while raising funds for the playground. The banners cost $175 to make. By setting the banner price at $3,000, we accumulated the residual $2,825 per banner to fund the playground expansion.

The original playground had been built by Kompan Pacific Company of Olympia. That’s where Skip Priest came in. We sought his assistance in talking with Kompan about developing the expanded playground.

Several discussions resulted in Skip proposing that Kompan move a playground display from their Olympia headquarters to Celebration Park. Modifications could be made during installation or in the first few months of operation. Kompan contributed to the project by reducing some of the delivery and installation costs.

The complete proposal was presented to the Federal Way City Council in January 2001, and approved that month. We sold the banners and raised the funds in about six months. The playground opened in August 2001, and the banners flew for three years, starting in November 2001. The expanded playground remains as a permanent installation.

You can see re-creations of the “Nature” banners in the Community Center hallway by the climbing wall. A nearby plaque lists all the banner sponsors.

Thank you, Skip, for your help. We know that you can bring the same creativity and ability to bring people together for solving problems to Federal Way as our next mayor.

Barbara Reid, Bob Kellogg and H. David Kaplan, Federal Way