Dionne Lester’s efforts ensure playground will be fit for all children

Dionne Lester left behind a promising corporate career to better care for her daughter, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. But it wasn’t long before she found herself at the helm of a multimillion-dollar, eight-year project to build a playground outfitted especially for children with disabilities.

Spurred by a community group, the Sassafras All Children’s Playground at Laurel Hills Park in West Raleigh is set to open this fall.

The extensive renovations were done through a private-public partnership with the City of Raleigh, which owns and runs the park, and a community group led by Lester. A final fundraiser this month at Crabtree Valley Mall is aimed at raising the last part of the $2.3 million project that began in 2008.

As a longtime advocate and fundraiser for the playground, Lester knows her own daughter, now a teenager, will hardly benefit from its flat, soft surfaces and innovative play equipment. But she does see a lesson in the experience for her and others.

“It’s a teachable moment about our larger community responsibility,” says Lester, who now runs a consulting business. “I feel like it’s our responsibility to do what we can for those that come after us, so they’ll have opportunities that weren’t there before.”

Lester is also a board member of the Frankie Lemmon Foundation, which was a partner in the playground project, and a founding member of the Next Generation of African-American Philanthropists, which raises and distributes funds for causes throughout the Triangle.

Lenora Evans is director of the foundation, which runs a school for children with special needs. She says the park likely wouldn’t have happened without Lester’s diligence, and will fulfill a huge need in the community.

“You only get one childhood, and every child ought to be able to play in a park,” Evans says. “That was a very personal goal for Dionne because she knew that void, and she was just dogged in her determination to make it happen.”

A change in plans

Lester grew up in Chicago but headed south to study electrical engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. She jokes that she was drawn by the male–to-female ratio of 7-to-1 at the university, and found herself to be the rare African-American female among her classmates.

“We were few and far between,” she says. “I loved it.”

Yet by the time she graduated, she says she had lost her passion for engineering. She went to work at Nortel Networks in Atlanta, but soon migrated from engineering to sales and marketing.

It was that job that brought her to the Raleigh area in the early 2000s, which at the time she considered a temporary move.

“I was a career woman on the corporate track,” she says. “I thought this was just a stepping stone.”

Having her daughter, Danielle, didn’t change her plans initially, because her husband, Darryl, was Danielle’s primary caregiver while she worked. But, she says, she thought for some reason God wanted her home.

In the meantime, her daughter wasn’t developing normally. When she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Lester knew that she needed to spend more time caring for her.

“Those first years are so important, I just knew that my new work was to do everything that I could for her,” Lester says.

Her doctors thought that Danielle would never walk or talk, but with the help of a wide array of therapies and her family, Danielle was able to do both those things, as well as attend school. She is now a sophomore at Wakefield. Lester has little doubt Danielle will be able to finish high school and enter the workforce.

Lester credits the constant stimulation, including play, that helped her daughter’s brain rewire in amazing ways.

Yet it was the lack of appropriate places to play that got Lester involved with Sassafras.

Starting small

Danielle was about 5 when Lester began talking to other parents about the lack of places where their children could play safely.

“There was definitely a void,” she says. “Any place you brought her, you would have to be right there, moving her and positioning her to make it work.”

Her husband’s career was in nonprofits and helped bring in other interested parties. The group approached the city parks department, which noted that the playground at Laurel Hills was intended at the time it was built to be an inclusive playground.

The playground did have a few features geared toward children with disabilities, but innovative play options for children with special needs had evolved rapidly since it was built in 1991, and the sandy ground cover was not wheelchair accessible.

When the project started in 2008, the economic downturn made it difficult for the city to shoulder the cost of the renovation. Lester’s group signed on to raise the money, which started out as an estimated $400,000.

Her husband signed the couple on as development chairs, though they have since divorced and he is no longer involved with the project. She had never really worked in fundraising, though she has since raised money for a therapeutic horse riding center, as well.

The group started out with fish fries and bake sales, raising small donations. As the effort gained momentum, larger donors started pitching in.

Lester organized two large events that boosted the project significantly, Evans says. The effort later received about half of its funding from a recent bond referendum that included money for parks.

Lester hopes the Crabtree fundraiser this month will help them cover the final roughly $20,000 for the project.

In the meantime, supporters also visited and learned from other inclusive playgrounds, and the project evolved into a total renovation that will make it unique in the state.

Lester has a hard time choosing a favorite feature – the ramps that allow children in wheelchairs to play alongside those without, the zip line with bucket seats, the roller bench where children can use just their arms to push across rollers, the adaptable swings or the rubberized surface.

“There are so many elements that I love,” she says. “The whole concept is side-by-side inclusive play.”

Lester started working again in 2011, staring her own business that handles everything from marketing to payroll and other services so that business owners can focus more fully on fulfilling their goals. She works with several nonprofits and small businesses, and recently took on her first Fortune 500 client.

She hopes her days as a major fundraiser are over, but she can’t be sure that’s the case.

“I don’t think I’m going to do this again, but I do hope to still be a champion and advocate for special needs kids,” she says.

This story was originally published September 10, 2016 at 6:24 PM with the headline "Dionne Lester’s efforts ensure playground will be fit for all children."