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Louise Thomas
Editor
A Utah girl asked her local city hall to build a playground she drew, and they held up their end of the bargain.
When Clearfield resident Rosili Olson, 12, was 11 years old, she used her crayons to draw what she imagined to be a safer playground for her younger sisters. In an interview with local newspaper Standard-Examiner, her mother Annie Olson explained that she decided to encourage her daughter’s vision by arranging a meeting at Clearfield’s city hall.
“Rosili’s a very strong-willed and very wonderful person,” Annie Olson, recalled. “When she brought it up, I thought, ‘This is a big deal.’”
“All I did was call [city hall] and say, ‘Hey, do me a favor. Would you let my daughter come in?’ They were so gracious and so kind, a lot more than I ever could’ve imagined, for sure.”
She took her designs to city hall and, much to her surprise, officials decided to use them as inspiration for their new playground. She pitched her dream playground to Clearfield’s head of Parks and Recreation, Eric Howes, who noted that the young girl’s designs had come at just the right time.
“It was budgeted but we didn’t have any specifics,” Howes told the Standard-Examiner. “After seeing all the effort she put into all of those drawings knowing we’d already ordered the playground for the park right by her house, the next best thing was to say, ‘We’ve got a playground coming in next year. Let’s use what you’ve done and build something there.’”
He continued: “It was just simply asking her, ‘Do you want to be involved?’ She said ‘yes’ and her mom was committed to bringing her every time.”
In a Facebook video showing the creation process, Clearfield city officials revealed what convinced them to make the then-11-year-old’s designs a reality.
“Rosili realized the playground by her house was suited for ages 5-12 and was not geared toward her younger sister,” Clearfield officials recalled. “After seeing her initiative and detail, we knew we had to make her dream happen.”
The post added that they had multiple versions of the playground for her to review throughout the process until they “had checked all her boxes and got the colors right.” Once the final designs were approved, they began to prepare an empty plot of land where the playground would eventually be built.
At one point in the video, Rosili can be seen smiling ear-to-ear beside the plot, proud that her dream would soon come true.
Less than a year later on Tuesday, September 24, she would attend the playground’s grand opening at Bicentennial Park alongside her mom and sisters, who all helped with the ceremonial ribbon-cutting, beaming proudly at what she and the Parks and Recreation team accomplished.
According to the Standard-Examiner, she gushed: “It’s even better than I imagined. It’s so beautiful.”
