Wanda Irving’s legacy: Shaping P.C. summers
July 11, 2024 at 12:27 a.m.
Janelle Carroll described her mother, Wanda Irving, as a community resource.
“She was a staple in the community who could do everything. Whatever she didn’t know, she knew someone who did,” she said. “She touched a lot of people’s lives.”
Though Irving died in 2020, Carroll has ensured her mother will continue to touch the hearts of the children in Port Chester—through Wanda Irving’s Neighborhood Free Playground Program.
Irving founded the initiative, previously known as the Columbus Park Playground Program, in 2004. Twenty years later, on July 1, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held in the Ryan Avenue greenspace to commemorate the program’s new name.
Carroll explained her mother started the free playground summer program after scholarships for the Village of Port Chester’s day camps were no longer going to be funded.
“She had been working with the (Village) Recreation Department as an assistant director. When they told her that they weren’t going to give out scholarships, all she could think about were the kids on the south end,” Carroll said.
The camps offered by the Village, which vary in length, currently cost about $100 per week.
“The families there couldn’t afford it,” Carroll said. “So, she worked with Tom Hroncich, who was (recreation) superintendent at the time, to do something about it.”
Facilitated by the Port Chester Recreation Department, the playground program gives families a place for their children to spend days during the summer, running Monday through Friday until mid-August. Though originally intended to be more of a supervised play time in Columbus Park, Irving and her daughter transformed it to be more of a traditional summer camp, with one exception.
“We’re here from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and we’re somewhat like a regular camp except we don’t go on trips and we don’t leave the park,” Carroll explained.
She and her staff, along with workers from the Port Chester Youth Bureau, give children supervised access to all parts of the park, including the turf field which typically requires a fee to use, as well as other forms of enrichment.
“We do arts and crafts, bingo and spelling bees,” she said, adding that the occasional entertainer is invited to perform for the kids.
It’s the model that the camp has been running off since its inception.
While Irving started the program in 2004, a heart attack followed by an invasive surgery led her to pass the torch down to her daughter.
“Her first heart attack and open-heart surgery was in 2010, so I took it over,” Carroll recalled.
But stepping down as program supervisor didn’t stop her mother from being involved.
Carroll said that, in the years following, Irving would make an appearance every day—one of the picnic tables in the park came to be known as her designated seat.
“I’m not going to lie, she micromanaged me for a while,” Carroll laughed. But as her heart condition worsened, she became unable to make the trip from her home on Locust Avenue. “It wasn’t easy for her. She stopped coming, but she was always on the phone with me to make sure everything was okay.”
When Irving died in 2020 following another heart attack, Carroll wanted to immortalize her mother and spent some time figuring out how to do so.
“I just wanted to do something that meant something to her,” she said.
Dedicating a bench or having a plaque installed were out of the question. “She was never the type of person who wanted to draw attention to herself,” she said. “So, I decided I wanted two things instead. I wanted to have a scholarship under her name, and I wanted to change the name of the program.”
She founded the Wanda Y. Irving-Jones Memorial Scholarship in 2020 and grants it to a graduating Port Chester High School senior aiming to study a subject in the humanities.
“We’ve been running it successfully for four years,” Carroll said. “We got that set up first and then we wanted to get the program’s named changed and we did.”
The renaming ceremony was held on the first day of camp. As the 100 children registered for a summer of play were corralled by Carroll’s staff, attendees spoke about the amount of work Irving had put into the camp and its impact.
“I know that this is great program that has been going on for a long time,” Village Recreation Superintendent Heather Krakowski said. “I worked with Wanda for a long time and I’m happy to see that so many people take advantage of the opportunity to come here every summer.”
Village Trustee Phil Dorazio echoed her sentiments, saying he knew Carroll for 40 years and saw how much work her family put into making sure all children have a place to go during their break from school.
“Miss Wanda was a crucial part of this Village and I’m happy to see her name on this now and her legacy continued,” he said. “I just want to thank her family for all the work they do for these kids.”
Carroll said she’s proud of the last 20 years of work, and while she may not be around for the program’s 40-year anniversary, she hopes her mother’s legacy will.
“One day, I may not be doing this,” she said. “But someone might look at Wanda Irving’s Neighborhood Free Playground Program and ask themselves, ‘Who’s Wanda Irving?’ which would be the start of a history lesson for them.”
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