Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Fundraising for a Haines School playground to be built in honor of former kindergarten teacher Jenae Larson is approaching its minimum $160,000 goal.

“In five months, we raised $110,000,” Larson’s mother, Kim Larson, said. “I put in $25,000 myself. I was paying it forward from all the money people donated to me. That’s how it started.”

Larson was killed in the Dec. 2 landslide on Beach Road. A lifelong Haines resident, she was teaching her first year at the school she graduated from after earning her teaching degree.

Organizations and individuals have since made myriad donations to recovery efforts since the disaster including the playground fundraiser. Aspen Hotels donated $20,000 to the playground last week and Corvus Design, a Juneau landscape architectural firm, is designing it pro bono.

“Every year we look for community projects to support,” said Chris Mertl, a Corvus landscape architect. “We were trying to find a way to help Haines out after the landslide.”

Kim Larson said her daughter talked often of improving the school’s playground. “When she would come here and pick up (her dog) Red, she talked about it more than a couple times,” Kim Larson said. “What better way to honor her memory, to do what I know what she wanted to work on doing before this all happened.”

Mertl continues to meet with Larson and a group of residents that formed a committee to oversee the playground’s design and ultimate construction. The conceptual design incorporates the current play structures into a larger aesthetic that reflects Larson’s interests and passions.

“One thing we quickly discovered was her love for the outdoors,” Mertl said. “That really became the basis of the playground design, trying to bring elements found naturally in the environment around Haines into the playground that include oceans, rivers and mountains. We’re excited to help and give them the ability to carry Jenae’s memory forward.”

The design includes tricycle trails, a sledding hill, log balance beams, sandboxes with fossils to dig for, a dock pier with a boat play structure and a shorefront landscape with boulders, play canoes and one of Larson’s favorite animals.

“Jenae loved humpback whales so behind the boat is going to be the tail of a humpback whale,” Kim Larson said. “We’re just trying to do all the things Jenae liked to do.”

Corrie Stickler, a designer who worked with Mertl at an architectural firm, is also on the committee. She said the playground and the process of designing it has emphasized the connection between Haines residents.

“My son was in Jenae’s class,” Stickler said. “When Kim was talking about this project, it just seemed like such an important thing to do and a really great way to remember Jenae and also give back to the community in a way I think she would really appreciate.”