KABOOM!! A slide, a tower, a climbing wall -- red, yellow, blue, green -- a place where all children can play together safely – will be a dream come true for 500 children at the C.E. Rose Elementary School, located at 710 W. Michigan, in Tucson. In a single day, Saturday, March 5th, surgeons, staff, families and friends of Tucson Orthopaedic Institute, in partnership with the national non-profit organization KaBOOM!, will join with parents and teachers from the C.E. Rose community in building a playground for the school. The handicapped-accessible structure will be erected by the team of 200 volunteers in about seven hours.

Construction will begin on “Build Day,” March 5th, at 8:00 a.m. During the day, the volunteers will be building the playground, planting trees, painting a mural and assembling picnic tables. Children from the school will be creating a paper daisy chain ribbon to be cut at the playground opening ceremony scheduled for 3 p.m. the same day. Following brief thank you’s from the community partners, the children will run through the ribbon, and shout KaBOOM!, celebrating the new playground of their dreams.

Lawrence R. Housman, M.D., orthopaedic surgeon and president of Tucson Orthopaedic Institute; Michael Duran, Vice President, TMC Foundation; representatives from KaBOOM!; Stephen Trejo, Principal of C.E. Rose, Roger Pfeuffer, TUSD Superintendent, will be on hand to open the new facility and share information about playground safety. TUSD governing board members, U. S. Congressman Raul Grijalva, Tucson City Council Member Jose Ibarra, and Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias have been invited to help build the playground and to attend the ceremony.

With the help of Tucson Medical Center Foundation and other health care and community volunteers, Tucson Orthopaedic Institute has raised $60,000 for the project. The school has contributed $5,000 from tax credit funds. The local project is a direct result of a national initiative of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). The AAOS campaign, Prevent Injuries America!®, is aimed at reducing musculoskeletal injuries. In 2003, there were 465,000 playground-related injuries treated in the U.S.

Building this play space for the C.E. Rose community reflects Tucson Orthopaedic Institute’s commitment to the importance of play and exercise in building healthy bones and healthy people. The Institute’s physicians are concerned not only about broken bones resulting from playground accidents, but also about those children who do not have the benefit of healthy play. They see many adults who now suffer from bone and joint disease because they did not establish exercise as part of their lifestyle in their formative years.

The local KaBOOM! Project started on Playground Design Day, Dec. 9, when C.E. Rose students, parents and teachers participated in exercises designed by the KaBOOM! staff to determine what equipment and colors the children would most like. They also discussed rules for the playground. The school, which is part of Tucson Unified School District, serves approximately 500 children in grades K-5. It has been serving the community since 1948. C.E. Rose Elementary was recognized as one of the five top Reading First schools in the State of Arizona in the 2003-2004 school year.