PORT NECHES — Connie Seal has vivid memories of the opening of Port Neches’ Tugboat Island.

“On that day the entrance was barricaded off and we, the five co-chairpersons- stood at the top rail. I could look out and see the huge crowd,” Seal, a co-chairman who worked to bring the park to reality, said. “They cut the ribbon and the kids just poured in there. They covered the playground in 60 seconds.”

On Thursday, Seal joined fellow chairpersons Zuetta Pinkston and Weida Philpott and Mayor Glenn Johnson who then was general coordinator of the project, to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the opening of Tugboat Island and to get a glimpse inside a time capsule that was buried in 1996. Jane Kubitz, who was also a chairperson, was unable to attend the event, which was moved to the pavilion due to rainy weather.

Johnson addressed a small crowd telling a bit of history of the large playground. He remembers his wife, Andrea, coming home and telling him “we’re going to build a playground.”

The women co-chairpersons soon enlisted the help of their husbands as they began to formulate a plan. Students at Woodcrest and Ridgewood elementary schools helped design the playground they would one day plan on and planning meetings were held on a regular basis. The group learned they would need about $200,000 in donations to bring their dream to fruition — a task that took on.

“We went to anyone and everyone to get donations, even if it was $5,” Philpott said. “We worked for four days in March and five days in April and had something for everyone to do. It didn’t matter if they were in a wheelchair or little bitty.”

Seal said everyone had a job even if it was sorting screws or sanding and students at the two elementary schools held a competition to see who could fill the most milk jugs with change, Pinkston added.

Not everyone believed a group of volunteers could successfully take on such a grand project.

“The day before we started construction a guy told me ‘you won’t get any volunteers,’” Johnson said. Upwards of 1,500 people volunteered to construct the playground. “We did (have volunteers). They came from all over.”

Betty Sheffield was one of a group of people clad in white T-shirts that read, “I’m a Playground Park-itect.” Sheffield volunteered as coordinator of children where she and some others watched upwards of 200 children during construction of the playground.

Employees with the city of Port Neches entered the picture on Thursday when it was time to open the time capsule. The men held the large PVP pipe object while another man sawed one of the ends off. Onlookers son gathered around a table under the pavilion to view its contents which included plans for the park, laminated list where volunteers had signed in on, list of work days, laminated newspapers with stories about the park and letters and pictures drawn by school children.

The time capsule items as well as a photo album compiled by Pinkston chronicling the progress of the park will soon find a new home at the Effie and Wilton Hebert Public Library in Port Neches.

Email: mary.meaux@panews.com

Twitter: MaryMeauxPANews