Zachary's Playground lets all kids be kids

Standing in the middle of Zachary's Playground in Lake St. Louis, Mo., in April 2007, Zachary's mother didn't know exactly where he was for a few minutes for the first time since he was born.

And that made her cry.

Not because she was worried about his well-being but because that meant 6-year-old Zachary was living in a normal child's world.

He was playing with other children with a little bit of the delicious freedom that most children and their mothers take for granted.

"People just don't realize how much a part playgrounds play in a child's life," said Natalie Blakemore. "The first time I stood back and watched him play like any other child (at an accessible playground in Washington, D.C.,) I said to my husband, 'Let's move here!'"

It was, of course, impractical for the Blakemore family to relocate to the east coast, so Zachary's mother started on a journey that has resulted in the creation of an accessible playground in Missouri that now has cities across America asking how they go about building one like it.

"Zachary's Playground" cost $800,000 and took 69 redesigns and four years to build.

"I still can't believe it's gone from my sitting at the kitchen table sketching to a reality," said Blakemore, a Brigham Young University graduate who had no idea when she gave birth to her son that he "inherited" a rare central nervous system disorder known as Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease.

The disorder is progressive and only boys who have it show symptoms, including a delay in motor skill development. It's so rare that the Blakemores' doctor didn't suspect or diagnose it until Zachary was 14 months old despite the fact that he couldn't hold up his head or grab things.

At that point, the Blakemores were told their son would probably never roll over or sit up or stand and would only live until about age 15.

Natatlie Blakemore knew he had serious problems when she tried to put him into an infant swing and he was too floppy for it.

"I went home just devastated," said Blakemore. "Here was something I thought we could do that he would enjoy and we couldn't even have that."

When her sister-in-law urged her to try to playground in Washington,D.C., she didn't expect anything much different.

But the surface was rubberized so Zachary could use his walker. It had a wheelchair ramp to the top of the tallest slide and panels at the bottom.

The other children playing there accepted Zachary instead of staring or pulling away from him.

The Blakemores considered building a backyard, family playground but it would be too expensive and cut out the social interaction they wanted Zach to enjoy. They realized what they needed was a community playground that their son and other challenged youngsters could use.