The Community Recreation Coalition

The Community Recreation Coalition was formed in Walla Walla in 1994.  The following is a history of the Coalition written by its first President, Daniel Clark, in 2001.

When I was growing up in Walla Walla, we had a summer recreation program in the parks, school gyms were open in the winter on Saturdays, and we had a night spot for teenagers called Shuffle Shop open two evening a week at the YWCA.  For a variety of reasons these programs were discontinued in the late Seventies and early Eighties. 

When gangs became prominent in Walla Walla in the early Nineties along with graffiti and drive-by shootings, Barbara and I became members of a Youth Violence Task Force put together by several public agencies.  In addition to organizing a number of graffiti paint-offs in our neighborhood and in other parts of town, I began to look beyond the symptoms of youth violence and realized the need to reestablish the kinds of basic recreational programs I enjoyed as a youth that had been lost through budget cuts, neglect, or other causes. 

Summer Recreation in the Parks

In 1982, after the City of Walla Walla eliminated its summer recreation programs in the parks due to budget cuts, I had been talking with city staff about the wisdom of renewing them without much response.  It finally became clear to me that the City wouldn’t be taking take leadership in the matter, and that any the initiative would have to come from citizens. 

Around the beginning of June, 1994, I sat down to design a minimalist recreation program beginning with a single park.  It occurred to me that our son Jeremy would be in town for the summer, would be looking for work, and had enjoyed working with elementary school children as an employee of an after school program in Hawaii, and also for the YWCA's Adventure Club in Walla Walla during breaks while attending Evergreen State College in Olympia. While continuing to explore other resources, I talked with him about the idea and suggested that, if nothing else, we could start a summer recreation program at Jefferson Park in Walla Walla as a pilot project with Jeremy as recreation leader, paying pay him either with a small grant from the Walla Walla Friends Meeting or out of our own pocket.  He agreed, as did the Friends, and I began looking for other resources and sponsors to build on that foundation.

In June 1994, besides the North Main Area Neighborhood Association Barbara and I had formed, there were two other neighborhood associations in Walla Walla—West End Neighbors in the poorest part of our city, under the leadership of Lynn and John Knapp, and the Memorial Park Neighborhood Association just to the west of us which had been formed by Peter and Illana Ferris who had recently moved to town from the Seattle area.   The West End Neighbors had been around for a number of years, but were at low ebb.  In order to help out, Peter and I went to one of their meetings at Washington Park, then heavily infested with gangs and drug dealers, where we discussed a mutual graffiti paint-off party as well as possible cooperation on summer recreation. Peter and Lynn loved the idea of our associations co-sponsoring a summer recreation project and also trying to reinstitute year round programs, and Peter volunteered to staff a part-time program at Memorial Park himself. 

On June 15, we invited various agencies and organizations to a meeting at the Jefferson Park Field House to consider our proposal to establish a Summer Recreation Program in the Parks, as well as to begin discussion of a year round City of Walla Walla recreation program.  When the inevitable question of liability insurance for a non-governmental recreation program was raised, we asked if there was any existing agency that could sponsor our project for insurance purposes.  After a long silence, Richard Pankl of Children's Home Society saved the day, saying that his agency "could probably do it." 

Out of that meeting came a decision to form the Community Recreation Coalition, a Washington non-profit corporation whose eventual members included the three neighborhood associations, Children's Home Society, the YWCA, the City of Walla Walla Parks and Recreation Department, Walla Walla County Human Services, Walla Walla School District, Whitman College, Walla Walla College, United Way, Community Connections, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, Boy Scouts, and several others. 

Three weeks later, on July 5, 1994 we opened a free summer recreation program in Walla Walla for the first time in over a decade, not in one, but in three parks.  We contracted with Children's Home Society to be our employment and insurance sponsor, and with funding we obtained from several local trusts and contributions from coalition members and the general community, we hired a coordinator and three park directors, including Jeremy, and began offering recreation programs for children 8-15 years old at Jefferson, Washington, and Memorial parks every afternoon from Monday through Friday, which continued until the week before school started.   

Activities we offered included chess and other board games, arts and crafts, ping-pong, badminton, croquet, volleyball, softball, tennis, and soccer which proved to be the most popular of all.  The Clarks also introduced the revival of a popular Walla Walla game called peggy I’d played as a kid, a corruption of cricket using softball bats and ball, bowling pins, two-person teams and balls and strikes to advance or retire a batter.  Jeremy and I were the peggy champions that summer, the Washington Park team members won the soccer tournament, and local kids in general were winners, including several teen-age assistants provided us by the Blue Mountain Action Council's Youth Employment Program. 

By August our total attendance had been 2711 children, and we were beginning to plan for the fall.  Our mostly Latino soccer team from Washington Park, the Aztecas, wanted to keep playing together in the fall as part of the Walla Walla Youth Soccer Association which for a variety of reasons had very few Hispanic participants, so the CRC agreed to continue to sponsor them. 

With Jeremy as their coach, they went 13-1-1 for the season.  We also wanted to transfer our other park activities to school gyms on Saturdays during the winter, and to begin evening activities for teenagers. 

In order to plan for winter gym and evening programs and to keep the soccer program going, the CRC hired Jeremy as coordinator for the fall.  In addition we asked the City of Walla Walla to consider including our programs in its 1995 budget and to assume City administration of them. 

For 1995, the City of Walla Walla contributed $10,000 toward our budget, and in cooperation with our partner Children's Home Society, the CRC ran another successful summer program—this time offering free lunches in three parks, Washington, Jefferson and Pioneer. Mask-making, drama, golf, and other special programs added to the continuation of our regular activities from the year before.  Our average of twenty-five youth per day per park the first summer rose to thirty per park per day the second summer for a total of over 4000 participants. 

In 1996, the City of Walla Walla Parks and Recreation Department assumed full responsibility for the summer recreation program, and to our great pleasure has continued to run it successfully ever since.  

The Winter Gym Program

In the fall of 1994 the CRC, which I chaired, was able to negotiate an agreement with the Walla Walla School District for use of school gyms on Saturdays during winter months as open recreation sites for school age children and their families.   On November 5, we began a staffed Saturday Gym Program for ages 8-18 at Blue Ridge School in the west end and Berney School in the east end of town.  We served approximately 1000 boys and girls and their family members that first winter.

The next year we began a three-gym program using Berney and Green Park elementary schools as well as the new Garrison Middle School gym which became our most active site, featuring high energy indoor soccer games as well as basketball, ping-pong, volleyball and board games.  In addition to open play, we arranged an indoor soccer competition between our Walla Walla sites and a similar program in Milton-Freewater led by high school soccer coach Jose Garcia working through their Horizon Project, resulting in the enrichment of both programs.  Our total attendance for the season was over 1700. 

Besides paying CRC/CHS staff at each site, I served as the coordinator on a volunteer basis that first year, and also arranged for the help of student volunteers from Whitman College.

Despite demonstrating the effectiveness of the winter program for two years, with an average of twenty-five participants per day per site the first year and twenty-five the second year, it wasn’t until we averaged forty-five the third year that the city council agreed to fund it.  On January 1, 1997 the City Parks and Recreation Department took over the program, which it is continuing to operate successfully at several sites.

Evening Activities for Teenagers

Finding a site for a teen center and sustaining attendance are both difficult. Looking around town, the most workable spot for more evening activities for teens seemed to me to be the Eastgate Marketplace, a small mall on the east end of town. The CRC board agreed, and we began negotiations with the management and merchants' association at the Marketplace, which agreed to cosponsor our activities.

On September 24, 1994 we held our first Saturday Night at the Marketplace.  We featured music and lights by a local radio station, as well as a singer-songwriter, miniature golf at an arcade which stayed open late for the event, ping-pong, chess, table games, and food discounts at a couple of restaurants there.  Over 350 teenagers showed up for the event, which continued as Club Eastgate on a monthly basis with the help of a very small student dance committee until April 1995.  At that point attendance had fallen off, in large part because the arcade at the marketplace went out of business, and we suspended operations for the summer and didn’t restart in the fall.  The old Shuffle Shop at the YWCA from the 1940’s to the 1970’s had succeeded in part because it was run by a very active student committee from the local high schools, which we hadn’t been able to develop.

In the Spring of 1995, the CRC did a survey of student recreation needs. What the students told us in their responses was that their greatest need was for evening activities for teenagers.  In January, 1997, we decided to try again.  After further site analysis in terms of parking, zoning, neighbors, size, cost, and other factors, we suggested the use of one or both of the high school cafeterias in Walla Walla, and the students who came to our meetings liked the idea.  What they said they wanted was a safe, dependable place to socialize on Saturday nights in a religiously neutral environment, rather than a night spot run during that period by a religious organization.  We proposed to the two school districts a 12-week demonstration of how such a community facility would work, beginning on March 1 at DeSales, then moving to Wa-Hi until May, when we would return to DeSales for the final three weeks.

Each facility had a stage, rest rooms, vending machines, parking, neighbors who are used to events there, and two different rooms to allow a variety of activities. The proposal was that the schools would provide the facilities without charge, and we would provide paid staff and adult volunteers, as well as youth managers.  Both schools agreed, if we paid their janitors to clean up.

We started out calling it “The Zone”,  but a naming contest soon made it “The Diskotek”.  Our season went more or less as planned, from the opening evening at DeSales, where we had 58 students and 14 chaperones, to 8 weeks at Wa-Hi, where attendance was usually higher, to the final event at DeSales on May 1.  Activities included music and dancing (with a disco ball), ping-pong, foos-ball, cards, food, board games, an occasional live student band, a limbo contest, and a lot of hanging out.  Again the student committee, though larger than our first attempt, remained weak, and we realized we still hadn’t developed the elusive youth ownership we needed to keep the activity going. 

Since live bands had been one of our bigger draws, I suggested to our youth committee that for the summer of 1997 we hold a Battle of the Bands at Crawford Park, at the bus transfer center on Main Street.  Our youth leaders wanted to do it, and the Parks Department agreed to cosponsor the event if we would coordinate it, so we sent out invitations to community bands, arranged for a sound system, recruited judges, and came up with a tight stage schedule that included 15 bands in three hours playing to a large, enthusiastic crowd of all ages who watched, danced, and at times plugged their ears.

After this inaugural event for Crawford Park, the City and the CRC cosponsored two more events there that summer with dancing to sound machine music by a local disc jockey.  Since then, the summer Battle of the Bands has become a regular event at Crawford Park coordinated by the City Parks & Recreation Department.

In the fall of 1997, the CRC partnered with the City for a new series of evening activities for middle and high school students centered on skating parties at the YWCA’s Ice Chalet and bowling parties at one of the local alleys. In order to fund staffing and other out-of-pocket costs for these events, the CRC went to the city council in late 1997 with a successful request that the city expand the recreation component of its 1998 budget as we worked toward the goal of a year-round city recreation supervisor.

Many people have spent time and energy over the years pursuing the idea of a community youth center, a perennial subject in most communities.  The Walla Walla Race Unity Coalition held a Youth Forum at city hall in November, 1997, at which a number of vocal youth called for an ongoing Youth Council, which was established and jointly staffed by several organizations and agencies over the next year, including Community Connections, the Community Network, the Race Unity Coalition, the City Parks Department, and the CRC.  At the core of the Youth Council, which called for the City to itself take responsibility for a youth center, were the two Wa-Hi students who had been the leaders in the CRC’s evening activities, Tai Harmon and Charlene Strozinsky.  Together with City parks director Mike Petersen they visited teen centers in other cities and were named to a city task force set up in 1998 in response to the request of the Youth Council and others to study the feasibility of a youth center and to report its findings to the city parks board. 

The effort was animated by the decision of the Walla Walla Community Network and its director Teri Barila to become active partners with the City in the process, and the re-involvement of John Avery, a former middle school teacher and retired National Guard officer who is a dedicated and creative youth worker and had pursued this quest for years.  Since 1997 when the Army and Air Force Reserve vacated their portion of the armory, the centrally-located building with its large gymnasium and many other rooms had seemed to me the natural place to locate a City-run youth center.  When I looked into its availability in 1997, the manager of the State’s armories at Camp Murray told me the City could lease most of it from the state at cost only, but this wasn’t pursued at that time by the city.   With John Avery’s connections with the Guard and his rapport with the youth, he was just the person to arrange for the building, as well as to build a youth-owned program there, which is what happened over the following three years. 

In partnership with Teri Barila of the Community Network and others, John spearheaded the formation of the Community Center for Youth, whose CCY Council I incorporated as a tax exempt organization in 2000.  CCY contracted with the City of Walla Walla for the cooperative administration of a dynamic and successful program run on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights at the armory, jointly funded by a variety of governmental bodies and other supporters.  More recently the program moved to the education building at St. Patrick Catholic Church, and from there to the YMCA which has assumed responsibility for this long-time community goal. 

Much has been accomplished and learned over the past several years of struggle toward a safe and dependable place for all of the community’s youth to gather, and undoubtedly much more will have to be learned and relearned in this demanding and elusive pursuit.

Park Improvements

As CRC members became familiar with the city’s playgrounds, we began to recognize the need to upgrade their facilities in a variety of ways, including the addition of volleyball and tetherball standards at several parks, which we arranged to have constructed and donated by a local manufacturer.

Basketball Hoops 

Another missing ingredient was basketball hoops in our parking lots.  We started at the large parking lot serving Memorial Park and Borleske Stadium near our home.  I suggested to city parks director Mike Petersen that there was a place for two baskets there, and he agreed. 

We then went around town looking for other public parking lots that could be turned into neighborhood playgrounds after hours, and found several more.  Mike mentioned that Ron Wilhite, a chaplain at the penitentiary and retired businessman, was the Johnny Appleseed of basketball in the region, and would probably donate backboards, hoops, and balls if we could get the standards up.  I had previously met and worked with Ron when we were both painting off graffiti around town. 

Before long, we had arranged for Key Technology, a local manufacturer, to produce and donate heavy-duty standards the City installed in several parking lots in town along with Ron Wilhite’s backboards, baskets, and nets, that are now used by kids in a variety of neighborhoods. 

Jefferson Park 

It didn’t take long for us to realize that our summer recreation program at Jefferson Park was handicapped by the fact that the only bridge across Garrison Creek to the adjoining Garrison Middle School play fields was at the east end of the park, while our activities were at the west end.  The same lack of access plagued other users of the park and the school grounds, so in the spring of 1995 I proposed that we build a new footbridge over the creek to connect the two facilities. 

I found that building a bridge between two different jurisdictions is easier said than done, but by August we had gotten the school district and the City to resolve their liability concerns and agree to the building of the bridge. We were fortunate to enlist the help of Rob Robinson of Building Dynamics to oversee the project, engineer Joe Murar to design it, and Jon Rubin of Lumbermen’s Building Supply to donate the materials.  The city inspector approved our design, contractor Walt Porter agreed to lead the construction party, and CRC members supplied the labor.  On August 2, 1995 we held a bridge dedication ceremony honoring all those who contributed, with donated refreshments from neighboring restaurateur Rosita Gonzales.

Another achievement of our program at Jefferson Park was the creation of an anti-gang mural on the side of the old caretaker’s cottage, which was led by Federico Diaz, a member of our Aztecas soccer team, with the help of about 20 other participants in our Jefferson Park program.  After painting graffiti off the various park buildings, these youth came up with a design portraying a handful of gang members with guns and drugs at their feet themselves painting over graffiti, and a sign saying, “The change started in 1995…Day by day things got better…Now we work together for the same cause.”  Federico has since gone on to become a key adult staffer in a successful new development program called Commitment to Community that has contributed to the strengthening of facilities in several of Walla Walla’s neighborhoods.

Washington Park Soccer Fields 

Our biggest CRC construction project was the building of two soccer fields.  Washington Park was the only major park in town without a soccer field, and was also in a heavily Latino neighborhood with a strong interest in soccer. 

The effect of our recreation program on Washington Park had already been dramatic. Police calls were reduced, and instead of a gang and drug-dominated park where responsible adults and families stayed away, the presence of our program had encouraged neighboring families to come back and to continue to use the park after we had gone home.  Vandalism at the park restrooms had also decreased.

What remained unchanged was a dusty, weed-infested area bordered by Ninth Avenue and Mill Creek. This undeveloped lot was owned partially by the adjoining American Fine Foods cannery, and partially by the City.  Though it was a natural spot for soccer fields, and there had been talk for some time of trying at least to plant some grass, nothing had been done.

Lynn Knapp had become the second president of CRC and was also the president of West End Neighbors.  For Lynn, the lack of progress on this obvious need was a constant irritant and was also an insult to the neighborhood, which had often been short-changed in terms of city services and facilities, as low-income areas often are.  Our recreation programs at Washington Park had already led to a city decision to build a second outdoor basketball facility there, and in 1995, I suggested we target the building of two soccer fields at Washington Park as a CRC project.  

Lynn and the rest of our board agreed, and that fall we arranged a meeting with representatives of the City, American Fine Foods, the Mexican-American Soccer League, the Walla Walla Youth Soccer Association, Image, West End Neighbors, and the CRC, out of which came the Washington Park Soccer Committee.

At the meeting, the American Fine Foods representative pledged to either give a nominal rent lease or full title for their portion of the property to the city for the fields, the City agreed to use its portion as soccer fields, and to maintain the fields if we would build them, and the two soccer associations agreed to donate several thousand dollars to the project.  In December, Lynn as chair of the committee sent out a fundraising letter to the community, which responded generously over the next two years, contributing the balance of our project budget into an account managed by United Way, which had been an active participant in all our projects.

Many people helped with the building of the field, but those who worked hardest were Lynn and John Knapp and a number of their friends from the local Russian immigrant community.   By 1997, we finally secured a deed from American Fine Foods, the money had been raised, the city had approved all the plans, the fields were graded and fenced, sand for the base of the field was hauled in, the irrigation system was installed, and all that remained was to seed the fields in the fall, wait for the grass to mature over the winter, and install the goals we had purchased in the spring. 

On March 17, 1998 we held the dedication ceremony for the Washington Park Soccer Fields, honoring all of the sponsors, workers, and contributors for a project that transformed a blighted space into a fine facility for healthful neighborhood and community activities.  Since then the fields have been well-used, and the city along with Commitment to Community has made other important improvements to this west end park.

Other CRC Activities

Beyond these achievements, a few other Community Recreation Coalition accomplishments are worth mentioning. 

A Year-Round City Recreation Program

An essential goal of the Community Recreation Coalition has been to reestablish recreation as an authentic mission of the City of Walla Walla Parks and Recreation Department.  While we began with the needed summer parks and winter gym programs and worked toward regular evening activities for teenagers, our broader purpose was to restore a year-round city recreation supervisor the city had employed from 1968-1982.

In the fall of 1998 we wrote to the city council pointing out that the city now had a summer recreation coordinator, a winter gym coordinator, and on an ad hoc basis a hand in evening activities for teenagers, and that it was time to consider a year-round recreation manager in its 1999 budget, who would provide continuity to these programs as well as giving creative attention to city-wide recreational needs. 

The council was in agreement, and the city hired Andy Coleman as what is now its full-time city recreation manager.  In addition to administering the existing programs, Andy has established city-sponsored adult volleyball, basketball and soccer leagues, as well as a variety of other recreation activities, bringing us back into the ranks of responsible communities providing resources for a variety of recreation needs for families and residents of all ages.

Latino and Low-Income Participation

Another of our goals has been to make recreation programs more accessible to Latinos as well as low-income people throughout the city.  The marked absence of people of color in the Walla Walla Youth Soccer Association’s programs was troubling to the association as well as to us, and both groups were eager to use our Washington Park Aztecas team to begin to change that. 

In registering the Aztecas for the Association’s fall season in 1994, we had to face both monetary and language barriers to registration.  Though the soccer association technically had a scholarship program for fees and equipment, it was rarely used, underfunded, and inaccessible. We prepared a scholarship application form for the association, which until then didn’t have one, and also translated it into Spanish.  CRC staff then went house to house in the Washington Park neighborhood to round up the necessary birth certificates, liability waiver forms, and a token payment towards the registration fees that we had negotiated with the association. 

The CRC also made a monetary contribution to the WWYSA for the establishment of a low-income scholarship fund to help enable others throughout the city to participate. 

Our activities and concerns also motivated other agencies to initiate or expand their Latino and low-income outreach programs, making more accessible a variety of services and programs to people of all income levels in the community. 

Fort Walla Walla Disc Golf Course

Fort Walla Walla city park on the grounds of our old cavalry fort is the site of many community facilities, including Fort Walla Walla Museum, Fort Walla Walla Amphitheater managed by Walla Walla Community College for its summer drama and other events, a Blue Mountain Audubon Society  natural area, a model airplane strip, model car track, ropes course, a BMX track, a skate park organized and built under the leadership of  Ron and Paula Nolte and their sons with some help and encouragement from the CRC, and a dog park.

One of the newest facilities at the park is the Fort Walla Walla Disc Golf Course established by the Community Recreation Coalition, installed initially in the old campground.   

On May 5-6, 2001  the former Fort Walla Walla campground became the eastern Washington site for the World’s Greatest Disc Golf Weekend, an annual promotional competition among cities around the world that don’t have a disc golf course within five miles, to see which can get the most registrants for at least 18 holes of disc golf. 

Disc, or Frisbee golf, is a growing sport which for the first time that year was included in the World Games.  Instead of balls struck with clubs, players throw discs or Frisbees from designated tees on established holes until they reach the target, which may be an object or, on most courses, a basket. The sport is much less expensive than ball golf, and can be enjoyed by people of any age the first time out, though it can also be challenging.  Because of its low maintenance and low impact on the land, once a course is set up with permanent tees and baskets, its use is usually free to the public.

Since it seemed like a great idea that needed local support, I suggested to the Community Recreation Coalition that we become cosponsors of the weekend, whose organizer was promoter and disc golf enthusiast J.J. Wilson.  I also proposed that we adopt the establishment of a free disc golf course in Walla Walla as a CRC project.  Our board agreed, so I drafted a letter to the editor published in our local newspaper, prepared a poster, and sent an announcement around to various people and groups in the area.

On the eve of the tournament, I helped J.J. lay out the course, adding one hole to the 9-hole course he had designed to make a 10-hole course--unorthodox in ball golf, but very acceptable in the more innovative disc golf world.  With alternate tees on each hole we had a 20-hole course with temporary borrowed baskets that accommodated over 100 registrants that weekend in Walla Walla. Two months later we learned that Walla Walla was the international first-place winner among approximately 200 courses and 15,000 disc golfers, the prize being four free baskets worth around $350 each.

The closest disc golf course to Walla Walla at that time was at Columbia Park in Kennewick, and a couple dozen members of the Tri-City Disc Golf Club had come over for our weekend competition.  In talking with them afterwards, it was agreed that I would do the legal work to incorporate their club in exchange for their assisting us with the immediate installation of pipe targets and brick tee markers.  They would also come back to help us install more appealing gong targets they would lend us while we were raising funds to acquire our own baskets. 

The CRC was able to obtain permission from the city parks department to install temporary tees and targets at the end of the weekend to keep the course in operation.  Brian Serven, Don Allen, and I then formed the CRC Disc Golf Committee, and CRC President Lynn Knapp and I went before the parks board later to seek permission to install the concrete-based gongs and some more substantial concrete tee markers donated to us by Dave Konen at Koncrete Industries. 

In July after learning we had won the four baskets, we applied for a grant from a local trust for the remaining six baskets we needed as well as course signage, and we received permission from the City for a more permanent course installation. 

The Fort Walla Walla Disc Golf Club has since been incorporated, and another twelve holes have been added for regular play.  The exciting course along the banks of. Garrison Creek near Highway 125 in Walla Walla is now listed on the Professional Disc Golf Association’s (PDGA) official course directory, and a growing number of Walla Wallans are improving their proficiency at the game, as rabbits, deer, and coyotes watch from the bushes.

Excerpted from "A Privileged Life--Memoirs of an Activist" (2013).

In recent years, the Community Recreation Coalition has been in standby mode and largely inactive.  A current project is to replace the basketball hoop removed for the construction of the new Memorial Swimming Pool, as well as moving the remaining hoop in the parking area there, both to the west side of Martin Field to continue to make the regular height and lower height hoops available for neighborhood and community use.