MANSFIELD — Nine-year-old Paul Crego shrieked with delight as his red sled slid down the hill at Liberty Park.
Unbothered by the frigid temperatures, he rode to the bottom and hiked back up. After a few trips down he hill, he walked over to the simple gray rack underneath the tree, swapping the red rider for a blue saucer.
Crego was the first child to take advantage of the new sled library at Liberty Park. The homemade rack had four sleds and a snow skate as of Thursday afternoon.
The sled library allows community members at the park to borrow a sled and return it when they’re done, free of charge. Residents can also donate sleds, snowboards and snow skates by placing them in the bin for others to enjoy.
Paul’s mother, Angela, smiled as she watched her son cruise down the hill.
Crego heard about the new sled library from her uncle, who helped spearhead the effort.
“You never see kids out anymore,” she said. “We got really excited because there’s not a lot for kids to do here and (Paul) loves the snow.”
Sled library was a grassroots effort
Steve “Paco” Blanton, is particularly passionate about improving his neighborhood park.
Blanton is a Mansfield native who moved back to town seven years ago. He’s also the voice of Rewild Liberty Park, a grassroots group working to remove invasive plants and replace them with native ones.
“When I moved back, I deliberately chose this neighborhood because I wanted to make an impact in the world,” Blanton said.
“It’s a kind of a new world. We’ve never had the fight against video games and the culture of just staying in your house. We need to kind of break that and get the kids back into the parks so they can socialize with each other and make friends.”
Blanton was browsing for park improvement ideas on Facebook when he stumbled across a photo of a sled library in Ty Warner Park, located in Westmont, Illinois.
Blanton shared the photo on the Rewild Liberty Park page with a simple query.
“What can we do to get this in our park?” he wrote.
It wasn’t long before Adam McElroy saw the post and shared it with Robert Price.
The two friends and skateboarders founded Skate Ohio, a non-profit that recently adopted Liberty Park’s tennis courts to turn into a DIY skatepark.
“I saw the posts at like 9 o’clock. I was just laying in bed, sent it to him,” McElroy said.
“At 5 a.m. I get a text, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’ By 7 a.m. he’s like, ‘Alright, we got sleds.'”
Price said the store manager at ACE Hardware on Lexington Avenue agreed to the donate four sleds. He and his kids built the sled rack in about an hour.
Sixth ward council member Deborah Mount and her sister Stephanie also showed up to the park Thursday with a sled to donate.
“It’s a great idea to get kids outside, having fun in the park,” she said. “I’m very appreciative of all the volunteers’ work going into this to make it happen.”
‘We’re going to build the change we want’
Stanton said many city residents felt disappointed when the city chose to permanently close the Liberty Park pool in 2021.
But projects like the rewilding effort, DIY skatepark and sled library are emblematic of the community’s resilience and investment in the park.
Liberty Park is located in Mansfield’s Fifth Ward, which got its start as an immigrant community at the edge of town. The land for the park was purchased collectively by neighborhood residents and donated to the city in the 1930s.
“This park was given to the city by the people,” he said. “We’ve met all kinds of people who are also willing to throw in with us and say, ‘Yeah, enough is enough. We’re going to build what we want. We’re going to make the change that we want.’
“It’s been really an amazing experience.”
Mansfield Parks Director Mark Abrams said the city is supportive of the citizen-led effort.
“I have the privilege of overseeing the parks, but it’s the people’s parks and it’s good to see people doing things in them,” he said. “It’s nice to see the community come together and do something for the kids.
