We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My earliest memory is a picnic in the park near our house, which was next to Wimbledon Common. Why on earth we went to a park when we lived so near the common is a mystery, but it had formal gardens and lawns - perhaps it was that very difference that took my parents there.
We've achieved this feeling, for instance, with the colors. The colors in the park are harmonious with each other, not like in big cities where they don't.
We slept in the park before we had a house, and eventually we shared a home - my parents, my grandparents and five uncles, my family, all of us - on White Oaks Street by Magnolia Street near the railroad. Those were hard times, but I loved living there.
We started with that, basically to help kids, and then we created a pole vault school, which is part of the club and exists to this day. The club and school exist.
Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.
The park achieved a kind of reality. Like these virtual reality games the children are playing with. I told them we were doing this 40 years ago! Disneyland is virtual reality.
When I was growing in the Callope project, we had an oval parkway. Pavement ran around this whole thing. We'd skate or ride bicycles. There were benches and trees out there. It was paradise to us. They finished building it the same year I was born.
Growing up, it was about finding a way to entertain myself outdoors. We spent all the summers on the beach, camping with my family a bunch, and traveling as much as we could. My parents wouldn't let me watch too much TV growing up or play video games, or anything like that.
If parents could just get their children moving around in the most simple and fun ways - jumping in leaves, dancing to pop music, throwing socks in a laundry basket - they could be sowing the seeds of great habits that could last a lifetime. It is all about turning it into a game.
We found that our kids enjoy those simple adventures we take as a family. I'm driving, my wife's the copilot and we give one kid a choice of what they want to go do. We eat a lot of bad food and sleep in some interesting hotels.
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