WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Amy Jaffe Barzach often takes her three children to play at Jonathan’s Dream, the playground she founded here in memory of her son Jonathan, who died of a rare muscular disease five years ago.
“One of my favorite things to do is to sit on a bench out of the way and just watch the children playing,” Barzach said. “Half the time when I go, people recognize us and that is wonderful in its own way, and other times we don’t know anyone and it is amazing to think that all of these people are enjoying it.
It was just three years ago that Barzach led a community effort to build the 25,000-square-foot universally accessible playground, which stands on the grounds of the Greater Hartford Jewish Community Center in West Hartford.
Now executive director of Boundless Playgrounds, a nonprofit organization that helps other communities build such playgrounds, Barzach was recently named a “Parenting Leader” by Parenting magazine for making a difference in the lives of children.
She says that the goal of Boundless Playgrounds is to make sure there is a universally accessible playground similar to Jonathan’s Dream within an hour’s drive of every child in the United States. Her supporters think Barzach should have no problem accomplishing that.
“Amy is passionate, smart, dedicated and persistent,” said Jane Engelbart, executive director of the Hasbro Children’s Foundation, which helps fund Boundless Playgrounds. “And she is very quietly changing the way people think about playgrounds.”
The Barzachs second child, Jonathan, was a seemingly healthy baby when he was born in 1994. But at the age of 4-1/2 months, he suddenly was unable to hold up his head. At six months, he was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that strikes one in every 6,000 births and eventually affects all muscle movement including breathing and swallowing. Amy and her husband, Peter, were devastated.
“We did what all proactive, smart Jewish parents would do. You call everybody you know…you research at the library and on the Internet. You try to make sense out of, basically, what is senseless,” Barzach said.
At first, the Barzachs thought Jonathan would survive the disease, but would be disabled.
However, on Thanksgiving, when he was just 7 months old, Jonathan went into respiratory arrest. By the end of December, doctors told the Barzachs that he had about a week to live. Jonathan died on Jan. 5, 1995 at the age of 9 months.
“Amy is very aggressive. She would do what she had to do to get things done,” said her younger sister Susan. “But when this happened, her breath was taken away.”
When a counselor suggested that the Barzachs work on a project to help them get through their grief, they chose to try to develop a playground that even young Jonathan would have been able to play on had he lived.
Soon Amy Barzach was living and breathing the playground they would soon name Jonathan’s Dream.
By day, she was vice president of marketing for the Hutensky Group and by evening, she often met with organizations and business leaders trying to find land and funding to make the playground a reality. One volunteer on the project dubbed Barzach “the human dynamo.”
Joyce Mandell was president of the Greater Hartford JCC when Barzach, then a board member, asked the board to support the project.
“The board overwhelmingly agreed that if Amy and Peter could raise the dollars out in the community, then the JCC would donate the land,” Mandell said.
With the blessing of the JCC, as well as the Hebrew Home and Hospital, on whose land the site actually was located, development of Jonathan’s Dream got under way. Community groups and more than 1,000 individuals offered their services.
In the end, more than 1,000 volunteers from around the community lent their services to build Jonathan’s Dream.
Barzach’s development of Jonathan’s Dream was so successful that communities interested in building special playgrounds began calling her for advice after seeing a blurb about Jonathan’s Dream in Time magazine. Boundless Playgrounds was formed in 1997 to assist communities in building universally accessible playgrounds and Barzach was tapped to head the organization.
Today, she works full time at Boundless Playgrounds. She says the job is flexible enough that she can spend time with her husband and children.
The Barzachs say that Jonathan’s Dream and Boundless Playgrounds are a positive way for them to deal with their grief.
“When this happened with Jonathan, we felt very helpless,” said Peter Barzach. “That was not in character for her or me. We felt that if we could help kids, that would help.”
Said Amy Barzach: “I don’t think any of us know how to lose a child.
“For me when I talk about Jonathan’s Dream and now Boundless Playgrounds, it is all about Jonathan. Jonathan inspired it. I certainly still have times when I cry. But to me it is very therapeutic.”
She hopes to continue to work with Boundless Playgrounds until its goal of 1,000 accessible playgrounds in the U.S. is completed.
“The same way Jonathan’s Dream was a community building process, all of the projects we’re involved with have a similar type of a story.”
The project, she said, “is something people can really put their arms around and feel good about doing.”