Playground equipment returns to Lions Park in Bethel Park

Playgrounds have come a long way since the days of bolting together iron bars and sheet metal atop a sea of asphalt.

“There are federal and state guidelines on what you have to do with playground equipment. It’s pretty extensive,” Bethel Park council member John Oakes said. “There’s even a specific type of mulch, so that when kids fall, the impact isn’t so great.”

He and other volunteers took care to follow the standards, even accounting for proper drainage, when constructing a combination of steps, slides and climbers at Lions Park, off Irishtown Road.

The project represents a second life for the play set, when council approved its donation to the Bethel Park Lions Club after years of use at the municipality’s Pine Tree Park.

“We disassembled the whole unit. We labeled every particular part. We put it in different buckets and different trucks to make sure we didn’t confuse anything, and then we delivered it here,” Oakes said during a June 22 event at Lions Park.

“We built it slowly. It took us a lot longer than a professional company would. But over a few weeks’ period of time, we were able to get it all done and working well.”

The contraption was in full use for the event, an appreciation picnic for volunteers, with youngsters and even a few brave adults having fun with all the features.

Bill Raymer, the Lions member in charge of park maintenance, said he’s glad to see the return of a feature that was missed.

“When people rented the park, they were very dismayed when we had to have that little playground removed, and we were having a hard time finding how we were going to come up with money to put in a new one,” he said. “And you guys came through for us. It was a godsend.”

The municipality is working on updating all municipal parks, with residents participating in the planning process. The original home of the Lions Park play set has brand-new equipment.

“Pine Tree Park’s a beautiful destination now, too,” Oakes said. “It’s very nice.”

The Bethel Park Lions Club, active since 1942, is the recipient of an Eagle Scout project at its park. Troop 1313 member Russell Willison, going into 12th grade at Peters Township High School, built a new trail and installed a sign indicating that the path honors two longtime club members, brothers Carl and the late Dominick Battistone.

Russell said the idea for his project came from Jim Willison, his grandfather and club past president.

As for the playground equipment, it’s receiving plenty of use not only during rental occasions, but as a diversion for little brothers and sisters when baseball games are taking place on the other side of the park.

“It worked out really well, and council couldn’t be more happy to donate this,” Oakes said. “It’s a good cause, and it was unanimous. Everybody across the board wanted to donate the equipment.”