Military kids at Walter Reed find place to play

WALTER REED PLAYGROUND PROJECT
In a Place of Pain and Recovery, Room to Romp

By Delphine Schrank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 15, 2007; Page B03

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday, the children came out to play.

About a half-dozen youngsters poured onto a rectangle of squishy green turf, hopped onto swings and scrambled over a jungle gym, minutes after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new playground. Tucked behind Mologne House, a 199-room hotel for outpatients and their families, it is a burst of primary colors amid the brick-and-concrete solemnity of the center where wounded warriors learn to walk on prosthetic limbs or cope again with the trials of everyday life.

Toddlers to teens can spend months living in Mologne along with their injured parents, but until now they have had few outlets for their stress. About 40 children live there, said General Manager Peter A. Anderson, but many more visit when school is out.

The alternative to the outdoor playground had been a makeshift play area of toys crammed against the stairs in the building lobby.

Another option had been staring at the fish in the pond behind Mologne. "My daughter was actually counting the fish," recalled Staff Sgt. Renee Deville, who has post-traumatic stress disorder and limited arm motion from a mortar attack in Iraq. Yesterday she sat on a sun-drenched wall rimming the playground, watching daughters Janee, 4, and Amani, 9, hard at play.

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