- "I'm going to build our son a park."

That's what Steve Davidson declared back in 1988, shortly after his only son was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.

Six months later the former Midland City Councilman had raised $650,000 in private donations to do just what he said he was going to do, built his son, Chris, a park.

Sadly, Chris died at age eight before the park's completion, but it was named and dedicated to his memory in February of 1989.

Fast forward nearly 30 years and the dedicated dad and his, wife, Jan went at it again, this time raising more than $3 million to update the park to modern special needs standards and a new location on land in Northwest Midland donated by the Henry Foundation.

It's Chris Davidson Opportunity Park.

The memory of Chris Davidson's short life lives on through the daily play of children of all abilities.

How and why does a couple build not one, but two, groundbreaking parks in Midland?

I'm Becky Ferguson.

And this is "One Question."

(dramatic music) The story of this park, Chris Davidson Opportunity Park, reminds west Texans of our long tradition of vision, energy, and generosity that characterize our region.

Now residents of Dallas, we caught up with Steve and Jan Davidson in their home there recently, where we asked them how and why they built not one, but two, groundbreaking parks in Midland.

I wanna start off, if we could, if you will talk about the origins of Chris Davidson Opportunity Park way back when.

- Chris was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at four.

Dr. Salyer kept saying after every surgery, he had four surgeries, but after every surgery, he'd have to go into these restraints so that he couldn't touch his face.

And so he was developmentally delayed, and Dr. Salyer kept saying, "I want you to go see my friend Dr. Cook "over at Scottish Rite Hospital, "'cause I think there's somethin' wrong."

And I kept sayin', "No, there's not."

Inside I knew, but I just wasn't ready for that.

So finally at four, I said, "Okay."

'Cause his mouth was closed.

We had really a problem with the pallet afterwards.

After all that was done, I said, "Okay, okay, let's go."

So we go to the Scottish Rite Hospital, and Chris is on the floor, and Dr. Cook walks in the door, and he goes, "Oh I see we have "a Duchenne's muscular dystrophy child."

And we looked at each other and went, "What?"

And he goes, "Oh my gosh, has he not been diagnosed."

I went, "No."

And he said, "Well, that's just how they get up."

- Has been now.

- Yeah, "That's how they get up off the floor.

"Well, we'll do a muscle biopsy."

And I said, "He's had it, and it came back normal."

"I think it was misread."

So a couple weeks later he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.

So we got his first braces in Midland, and they were expensive, unbelievably.

And I told Steve, I said, "I think we could go "to Scottish Rite."

But we have to have a mason.

And I said, "I'll get my dad."

Because he was big in that.

And so he got us in there, and we went together for our doctor appointments, but it would just be me and Chris for our braces.

And we went, what, every eight, nine weeks or somethin'.

And we spent all day, 'cause you have to cast and then they make them.

And then, so we're all there all day.

And we came home and I said to Steve, "I just wish one time you would go to "the hospital with us in Dallas "because if you could see Chris play "in this tiny little park they have "just right across the way, "it's for handicap and non-handicapped kids."

"And he can't go to the park, 'cause there's sand," "a kid with problems can't be in a park."

Then I think you would be amazed.

He said, "Sure, I'll go."

So the next trip he went with me and he was just blown away.

And he's walking out and I said, "What's your day like today?"

And he goes, "I'm gonna go build my son a park."

And I went, "What?"

And he goes, "I am, I'm gonna go build myself a park."

And within three months that park had been, all the funds for $650,000 had been raised.

He went to Unterbrink over at MARC and got the land for free because it was in between the MARC and what used to be the CP Center.

He did it.

- And of course, as you know, I'd been on a council.

So I kinda knew a little bit about the history of parks in Midland, knowing that they were virtually a non-entity, because back in the 80s nobody cared.

We mowed 'em a couple of times a year and that made everybody happy.

Back then the idea of having a park that was designed to allow kids with and without disabilities to play together, there was only two other in the country at that time.

Yeah, they could go to the park.

We'll just kinda sit 'em over here.

- [Jan] They get to sit on the outside.

- Sit on the outside.

I talked to the people that applied equipment, supplied equipment to the city, told 'em what we were doin'.

And of course they were like, "Yeah, we can do that."

And I'm like, "Oh great."

The city of Midland was very helpful.

They lend us design services, and Ron Stevenson did the construction.

And so when the equipment started arriving, it looked fine.

And then when they were, what used to be out there, that huge maze, they were installing it, and I happened to be out there, the entrance into that maze was up off the ground about this high.

And the representative was there.

And I said, "This needs to be flush to the turf, 'cause a child can't get up in a wheelchair or braces or."

GameTime was great.

They came in and modified it.

- Tell us a little bit more about Chris.

You talked about when he was born, and he had a very short life, but tell us about him, about Chris the child.

- Not unlike a lot of young couples, I think we have always said that we felt like that, we were, in a sense, chosen to be Chris's parents.

And I think out of the short life, and always go back and pick up something that Dr. Phil told me one time.

He said, "The thing you need to remember..." This was after Chris had died.

He said, "Chris only died one day.

"He lived eight years."

And he said, "What I want you and Jan to reflect on "is that eight years and what a teacher he was."

Chris had a twinkle in his eye.

Just like that little mischievous attitude.

But he was always, he was always happy.

He never acted like a child that had disabilities.

He was, he would laugh.

He would, really have a good time.

- Now you built a new park.

So tell us about that and what's unique about it.

- So if you fast forward 25 years, you can imagine the amount of progress that's been made.

And so the theme behind the new Chris Davidson Park is that almost every part is accessible to people, but it's not usable.

And that was the guiding principle in purchasing the equipment that you see on the ground out there.

Park's accessible and 90% of the equipment is accessible is usable by children with disabilities.

I mean, last Tuesday, tomorrow, the following Tuesday, we'll have over 200 kids from MISD, and special education department, out there playing.

- We had 60 kids last Tuesday.

- 60 last Tuesday.

60 tomorrow.

- 60 kids.

- 60 the following day.

Following Tuesday.

- And see, it's not, he's done such a great deal.

There's a zip line over there for kids without any problem.

And on the other side, there's a zip line for kids to get in and they're buckled in and they zip across.

There's expression swings.

You and I would swing with our babies when we were little and our babies sat here and never saw their faces or anything.

But the expression swing you stand, your child is in a swing.

You swing back and forth and get to watch your child.

- Face.

- It is amazing.

And the whole design of the gazebo is, it used to drive me nuts when we would take our granddaughter to the park.

And I'm constantly looking for her because the equipment is so much and big.

But the gazebo is open and it's up.

You can see all four quadrants in the park, and you will know where your child is at all times.

So it's just, it's brilliant on his part.

- So when we started working with GameTime, and they are an outstanding company.

They're a company out of Alabama, and they have occupational therapists, speech therapists that work for this company.

And so they're on the cutting edge of these things.

- So they understand the challenges.

- That's right.

And there's part that's designed, again, with those two guidelines, the child can roll in on a wheelchair in the Chris Davidson Opportunity Park, but then they're able to navigate some of those ramps.

And at the very end of a ramp there's a ride that goes back and forth, and they can ride with their peers, with their siblings.

And that was the whole purpose behind building the park.

Because we said, look, there's gotta be a way to start bringing people together.

And recreation is one of the key ways.

We did some interviews early on with Chris Hightower.

I don't know if you know Chris, was with Social Studies, but he has Jackson who has, I haven't seen Chris in a long time.

And anyway, and his oldest daughter, we did an interview with them one morning at their home and his oldest daughter, who's Jennifer.

I can't, anyway.

I said, "Tell me what this park "would mean to you and to Jackson."

She said, "Well, right now, if we go to a park, "we have to pick Jackson up and put him on the slide "and someone needs to hold him "until someone gets to the end to catch him."

She said, "He'll be able to play."

You can't go all the way up, but at least he's up there with his friends and his peers- - His peers.

- And his sisters.

- And not just sitting on a park bench somewhere.

- And that's also a great deal for the parents, to be able to see their kids do- - Playing.

- Quote, normal things with other kids.

- There was a story behind that.

Like when I used to work for Matto's Foundation, which I did for five and a half years, and after we'd started this project I was talking to one of my colleagues who had since left as well.

And she was always curious about, "How's it going?

"How's it going?"

And I said, "Well fine.

"We're really focusing on the kids."

And she said, "Why?"

And I said, "Well, 'cause it's a park."

And she said, well, and Jan touched on it a moment ago.

Parents of children who look different, or act differently often isolate themselves.

And so there they suffer and their kids suffer.

So we said, if we can create an environment focusing on families, then the parents can come out, watch their children play with a peer who's not disabled.

And they also get to experience a family that has healthy children.

And they can realize that my child can play.

My child can go to this park and swing next to someone that's not.

And so that's really the whole story behind it.

And I'm just blown away by the number of young couples that have young children, I was saying to your colleague, I said, "I went out there one day, and I said, "I didn't know there was that many young people that had these young kids."

But you go out there and you start kinda conversing with people.

And we go, there's not, we've lived all over the country.

There's nothing like this.

- Well, it's interesting to me that y'all's passion seems so fresh, even though I know Chris has been gone for a long time.

- Yeah, 30 years.

- I mean, you could have- - He's been gone for 30 years.

- Over 30 years now, 31.

- But this still is something that obviously burns bright in both of you.

- When you- - I think that goes back to him being an inspiration.

I mean, he was a teacher, and he said to Jan and I, he said, look, in his own inimitable way, that God provided him that ability to say, "There are things that matter in this world "and you guys aren't even close "to focusin' on what matters.

"So I'm here as a teacher.

"And so listen up."

- This park is bigger, brighter, better, more exciting.

And it truly emphasizes who he was.

- All of the money to build this beautiful new park, those are private dollars, am I right?

- For the most part.

- He raised- - Midland Development Corporation gave money.

Midland County gave money right before Mike Bradford retired as county judge they made all those distributions to Midland College and MISD.

- He raised over $4 million on his own.

There's no company.

He did this on his own.

- Well, I got to the point, I guess it was Jim Bilotzer said one day, he said it got to the point where people wouldn't return your phone calls 'cause your number comes up on their number ID.

And no, no, I'm not callin' that guy back.

He's gonna want more money.

- He's relentless.

- He was relentless.

- But there's so many- - And he has such a great story.

- So many neat things that happened, and, you would just, I remember one day I got a very nice gift, very nice gift from, I didn't even recognize the name.

So, you know, thank heaven for Google.

I kinda Googled the lady's name, and her husband's obituary came up.

I don't know, I read that.

And apparently through his long service with a company, well, he had, and then they sold it, and the owner awarded him.

And so I thought, oh, golly, geez.

So I said, well, I'll just write this lady a note.

And at the time I wrote her, we were about $89,000 short of meeting the Henry's Challenge.

And wrote her the letter, and about, I guess a week or 10 days later, I got a note back from her.

She said, "I'm happy to do what I did the first time," but she said, "then, you know, I got to thinkin', "why not just help these people finish this thing up?"

And three or four days later here comes a check that allows us to qualify for the Henry Challenge.

- And build the park.

- And build the park.

We were so, from the get-go, I mean, I can just name names, Dick Campbell.

I mean, what a godsend.

I mean, the people that work for him.

The subcontractors were out there almost without exception.

These people were saying "I've never worked on a project like this."

I've built buildings ad all of those kinda things, but this is really cool.

- The opening, there were, Chris's pediatrician was there.

- Dr. Born.

- And our priest was there.

Chris was his very first funeral, child funeral.

There were just people there that knew Chris, and the amount of life.

He was, I mean, he was bigger than life.

- And I think Jan put it very well one day when we were talking.

She said, "Our desire, as any parent is, "when their child dies is that they not be forgotten.

"And so the park is our way of saying "we want Chris's legacy, not his life, "but what he taught people, "to remain intact and go into future generations.

"But she also put it just as eloquently."

She said, "This is our way of giving back to Midland."

- Absolutely.

- Which was our home for over 44 years.

- Absolutely.

- And we're no different from a lot of people that lives that take them through Midland.

That will always, you know we live someplace else, but at a heart level, our home will always be in Midland.

- Next, we visited with Chris Hightower and his children, as they enjoy playing at the new Chris Davidson Opportunity Park.

We are here with Chris Hightower and his son Jackson and his daughter Abigail at Chris Davidson Opportunity Park.

And I want you to talk, Chris, about what this park means to you and your family.

- Well, so we had always, when you have a kid with special needs, you go to a park and you're around kids who are able to climb and get on things.

And when you have a child that can't climb a ladder as well as some, without some assistance, that it's really one of those things that it's hard.

I mean, you have to pick him up and move him and put him on things.

And when you have a wonderful place like this it's a place where he and his wheelchair can, he can roam around without any hindrance.

And he can really just be him.

He can just be a kid.

And I think that that was really important, even for his siblings, that he has an experience like they had.

Like they could go get on a slide and go down a slide and now he can do that, too.

We would make that, they would make this happen.

Like whenever we would go to a park, they would have, they'd physically pick him up and move him so they could get him to where he needed to be.

But now, I mean, they can come out here with him, and he actually even, through his, through MISD also does his therapy out here as well.

- Tell me a little bit about that.

The therapy.

- Well, so he has a physical therapist that they can actually get on some of the machines that are out here.

I think he's a big fan of the zip line that's out here as well, but he's just, I mean, they come out here, they do some of their work with him here, and it's, he loves it.

He always has a good time.

And he loves being here right now as you can tell.

- This was, I think probably a pretty revolutionary park.

I mean, there are not very many like this.

I mean, have you had experiences with other places or is this really different?

- So the only, I think the only other place had been in Dallas, in Fort Worth, right?

Outside of Cook's.

There's kind of an all needs park.

And we've been to that before.

But I mean, if you have to go to Fort Worth to go to a park, I mean, that's kind of a difficulty when you're able to just come here, it's so much, I mean so much nicer situation, but really nothing, I haven't really even seen anything like this anywhere else.

I mean, even the park there is kind of a mix of able body and special needs type equipment.

But this is great.

I mean, and even here we run into kids of all ages here, too.

- [Becky] All ages and all abilities.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, as a parent of a kid who has some special needs, that's all you really ever want, is you want your kid to be accepted by everybody else.

And kids are better at it than adults are.

It teaches kids who are able-bodied to appreciate not only that in themselves, but also anybody who's, I mean, they're very empathetic to anybody who else has a special need.

I think it's good for kids of all ages.

I mean, even, I would say, even at school, to be around kids of different abilities so that you can show and learn from those kids as well.

I mean, I've been brought to tears at his school whenever he's worked with other other classrooms and been in classrooms, inclusion wise, it's amazing.

I mean, they love him and they talk to him and they bring him into this.

And same with here.

I mean, that would be.

So children are always very honest about, maybe too honest, to some extent, but if we're walking down the street and he's in a wheelchair, they might stop and stare.

I think when they're here, when other kids are here, even other adults are here, they don't stop and stare.

It's more of this is a place for everybody.

It's not, we're not gonna judge you or think what's wrong with your kid?

Or why is he in a wheelchair?

I mean, it's more of that they just get to be.

And there's not really a preconceived idea of them when they come in to either exclude or even say anything negative or even just stare.

It's just that everybody's here.

- Well, when we first came to sit down at this picnic table you pushed Jackson up to the table and made the comment that even the picnic tables are accommodating.

- Well, so I think we're we talking about how like at a restaurant, you show up at a restaurant, and you got a kid in a wheelchair, the table ends here and you gotta kinda scoot him in to get in with everybody else.

These tables even have an extension where someone who's in a wheelchair or a need for it, can just be here like everybody else.

And I mean, I think that is, this one little thing is indicative of the whole park.

I mean, it's really how we see it with him.

- Tell me what some of Jackson's favorite things are at this park.

- So I would say the zip line.

Definitely anything that swings he loves.

And you can see him every once in a while, he'll try to kick his head back.

Anything that he can kick his head back and be upside down is his thing, for sure.

- [Becky] I love that.

- Yes, I'm talking about you, yes.

It's okay.

- Well, are there other thoughts that you have on the park before we go and do some playing?

- I just, I can't thank Steve and everybody who contributed to building this because I think that there are people in our community that understand the need for something like this and to maybe those who don't, I would kinda invite you to come out and just look at this and see what, see what this does, the joy.

I mean, you even hear kids playing, it just brings kids joy.

And it doesn't matter if you're able-bodied or not.

You can still have that experience as a kid playing.

So, I mean, I think that that's, that's what this park has meant to me and to our family.

I mean, this gives us a seemingness of normalcy that we didn't have before.

- Well, and you talked about a second ago, you mentioned Steve and Jan Davidson, who of course started Opportunity Park many years ago in the 80s, and then this new and improved Opportunity Park, and it is sort of indicative of their vision and the kinds of things that we've come to expect in Midland.

- Absolutely.

And that's, I mean, I can't say enough about how thankful we are for that.

I mean, Steve and I have talked a lot about his son as well, and I mean, there's a lotta commonalities that we've kind of seen with this, and I hope that, that my son is such a beneficiary of the work that they've done.

And all the kids who have needs in this town are really gonna be, are gonna be grateful for this.

Yeah, he's like, you're really serious right now.

(Becky and Chris laughing) - Love that.

You all have had a precarious journey getting to this year 14 with Jackson.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Sure, so when he was born, we really didn't know what was going on.

He was a preemie.

And we didn't have a diagnosis other than a lot of the nurses and doctors had told us we need to be ready for the worst.

So, projections of maybe living 24 to 48 hours, and that's not an easy thing to hear when you've just got a newborn child.

And so I think that looking at him now at 14 this is amazing that he's, that his journey has continued, and just, he's always been this great inspiration for me.

He doesn't worry about all the things that I worry about as an adult, and definitely even her as well as a younger person, but he's just got such a expressive manner about him, even though he doesn't speak, and he's non-verbal as far as that is, but he can let you know through his actions how he actually feels about stuff.

So you just, through the 14 years you just learn to learn a different way and just be appreciative of everything that you've been given and everything that he represents.

- Children of all abilities now enjoy the gift of the Chris Davidson Opportunity Park on a daily basis.

Our painting today is an acrylic on canvas by Jack Roth.

Painted in 1981, it's entitled "New Synthesis Number 35."

Roth, an American painter in 1927 to 2004, was an abstract expressionist painter, poet, photographer, and mathematician.

In the 1950s, his work was selected by the director of the Guggenheim Museum of Art for a traveling exhibition entitled "Younger American Painters."

One of the first major debuts of abstract expressionist movement to be shown at an American museum, the exhibit traveled to major museums across the country.

His works were later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

You can see this and many other works by 20th century modern artists at Baker Schorr Fine Art Gallery in Midland.

Finally, thank you for joining us for "One Question."

We will be back each Saturday at 4:30 where we will answer the questions you want to know from the people who know.

Other ways to watch "One Question" include Basin PBS Facebook, Passport, and YouTube.

If you have a question, send it to us at OneQuestion@basinpbs.org.

I'm Becky Ferguson.

Good night.

(dramatic music)