November 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 23

for set design or costuming, so we used
what we had to make the program work.
And what we had included simple supplies such as colorful paper, leftover
shirts from sporting events, and discarded cardboard boxes (which became the
main ingredients of onstage scenery).
It helped that we are located just a few
miles from the Washington, D.C., theater
scene. It also helped that I am a Facebook enthusiast-and that I was able
successfully to " friend " Tony Award winning actress Tonya Pinkins.
Pinkins has appeared in the television
shows " Army Wives, " " 24, " " Law and
Order, " " The Closer, " " Criminal Minds, "
Cold Case, " " All My Children, " and " As
the World Turns. " She was performing in
a play in the area, so I made a field trip
out of the event and asked the actress
after the performance to visit with the
youth of our theater program. Pinkins
agreed-but she did much more than
visit. She ended up conducting our first
Master Theater Class at the center. And
Pinkins liked the program so much that
she requested that I consider directing
her children's play, The Dred Scott Story:
In Spite of Every Bad Thing.
With the early momentum we had
built and the added sparkle of celebrity involvement, it was not a hard sell to
get all Alexandria recreation centers on
board with the ACCT program. The center directors wanted their youth to be exposed to the arts in a more meaningful
way, and we were clearly doing just that.
Once the other center directors were
committed to the program, we all began
working together to hammer out logistics
of productions across all of Alexandria's
community recreation centers. The Alexandria City Community Theatre program
is only a year old-but it is now embraced
by youth, children, their families, and the
community at large. We are grateful for
the support and the spirit of cooperation
that allowed us to " just do it. "

McKenya Dilworth-Abdalla,CPP

is Acting Center Director at the Nannie
J. Lee Memorial Recreation Center in
Alexandria, Virginia.

Paying It Forward
Don Wood foregoes his annual mayoral stipend
in support of recreation scholarships

o demonstrate that money isn't everything, Mayor Don Wood of Clearfield
City, Utah, decided four
years ago that his mayoral
stipend would be better used in a scholarship fund for local children than kept to himself.
In 2006, around the time
he became mayor, Wood
and his wife, Judy, stood
at a ribbon cutting for a
new aquatic and recreation facility in the small,
29,000-person town.
" We realized that
about 60 percent of children in Clearfield City
qualify for free or reduced lunch, " Wood
says.
Reflecting on their
own backgrounds of
growing up in cashstrapped families,
the Woods felt a
" sense that we needed to ensure that all children of Clearfield City,
regardless of their economic circumstances, were able to participate in that
beautiful aquatic center and all the amenities it had. "
Already financially stable through
his ownership of several tire stores in
Clearfield City, Wood worked with local
officials to transfer his annual $12,610
stipend to an existing scholarship fund.
The fund, created in 2000, offered $100
scholarships to a small number of local
children who eligible for a scholarship
based on their family's participation in
a federal aid program. The scholarship
could then be used to offset recreation
registration fees or purchase a punch
pass for the aquatic center. Unfortunately,

www.NRPA .ORG

however, a lack of city funding had previously caused scholarships to run out early each year.
With the Woods' donation, the number of aquatic center punch passes available increased from 173 in 2006 to 204
in 2007, and then bumped up to 334 in

2008 and 362 in 2009. Wood noted
that during the 2008 recession, demand
for scholarships increased, so city officials lowered the amount offered to $50
per child in order to help more residents.
Wood said he and his wife are happy to be in a position to " pay it forward "
and provide access to recreation for
Clearfield City children.
" Those are important activities for
young people, " Wood said. " It gives them
opportunities to step back and enjoy
things. It improves their quality of life. " 
-By Keri Schwab, a graduate
student in the Department of
Parks, Recreation, & Tourism
at the University of Utah.

No v e m b e r 2 0 1 0

Parks & Recreation

November 2010 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2010 - Parks & Recreation