Johnny Appleseed of the Swing Set

By Anastasia Toufexis

"Is everybody ready out there?" came the cry. Then the countdown: "Five! ... Four! ... Three! ... Two! ... One!" And a jubilant roar: "We did it!" In the glow of a Florida sunset, a herd of screaming children stampeded into Indian Harbour Beach's just completed playground last month and began scrambling over the turreted fortress of mazes and bridges, slides and ladders, tire tunnels and sand-boxes. As the youngsters gamboled, beaming parents and teachers stood along the periphery, exchanging handshakes and hugs.

All of you who are deep into mitten weather may envy those who are scampering around a Florida playground dressed in shorts and T shirts this time of year, but, after all, these folks earned it. For five days, more than a hundred volunteers at Ocean Breeze Elementary School sawed wood, dug holes, hammered nails and tightened bolts. Come nightfall, they still toiled, aided by a fire truck's flood-lights. At the hub of the commotion, sagging tool belt at waist and diagrams in hand, was Architect Robert Leathers, 45, the Johnny Appleseed of the swing set. Over the past 15 years, Leathers has helped thousands of volunteers erect nearly 350 playgrounds in 24 states, ranging from pocket-size parks to a 1 1/2-sq.-mi. recreation area, complete* with a 600-seat amphitheater, in Romulus, N.Y. "The attitude is what makes this work," says Leathers. "I love to see a whole family--a grandparent, a parent and a child--out there working. They've never had a chance to build something together like this."

Leathers, whose boyhood passion for multistory treehouses led him to become an architect, stumbled into the swing-and-slide business in 1970, when he helped build a play area for his children's school in Ithaca, N.Y. That effort took 15 weekends, but the community spirit engendered by the all-volunteer project exhilarated Leathers so much that he made it a specialty of his practice. Today six of his associates work fulltime on designing and building playgrounds, which generally go up in four or five days and cost anywhere from $2,500 to $45,000, about one-third the usual price.

Before construction begins, Leathers holds a Design Day, when he meets with local residents to solicit their suggestions. He especially invites children to submit drawings and wish lists; castles and mazes are among the most popular requests. Leathers can be quite obliging: he built a wooden Alamo, equipped with an armadillo-shaped drawbridge, for a Dallas elementary school and fashioned a crude telephone system out of three-inch plastic piping for Hamilton, Va. Safety considerations, however, usually force him to reject water slides, underground tunnels, bike racetracks and skateboard ramps.

At Ocean Breeze, requests for a castle and a space station were approved, but grownups nixed a plea for a haunted house lest it attract graffiti. After the diagrams were drawn up, community leaders received from Leathers' firm spiral-bound manuals detailing exactly what lumber and tools were needed. Some critics have voiced concern about the safety of volunteer-built playgrounds, but Leathers insists only the best materials are used and the workers are strictly supervised. "One thing we have learned is that we can't cut corners," says Leathers. "Playgrounds have to be tough because kids put them through such hard use."

Leathers' genius for organization became apparent on the first day of construction, when he roamed everywhere on the site, calmly answering questions and giving advice. Teams of workers built the playground section by section, assembling the numbered pieces of wood as they would a giant jigsaw puzzle. Age did not seem a barrier: Henry Stiles, 71, a retired maintenance worker, dispensed the tools collected by volunteers (including 15 rasps, 30 saws and 25 shovels), while a group of first-graders sanded wood. Tiffany Greenis, 8, carried trays of apples and carrots to workers, while her mother Lynn picked up fresh skills. Said she: "I came out expecting to do a little hammering and ended up using tools that I still have no idea what they were."

As the playground slowly took shape, the pace quickened. Sometimes bad weather or ebbing enthusiasm can delay the work, but the Ocean Breeze project was free of such annoyances. By midafternoon of the fifth day, Robert Becker, 26, was delivering a final batch of sand in a borrowed backhoe, while Gary Craycroft, who had last hung swings for his baby daughter Penny, now put them up with her help. Said Penny, 14: "It's been neat. I'll never forget working at night with the lights on." But Leathers is out to impress the adults as much as their children. "They start out as cynics, but when the countdown begins, and the kids stream in, they start to cry," he says. Leathers assures his clients that his playgrounds will last at least 25 years, but the memories are guaranteed for a lifetime.

With reporting by Reported by Sidney Urquhart/Ithaca, Don Winbush/lndian Harbour Beach