ENID – When Leonardo’s Discovery Warehouse opened in downtown Enid in September 1995, work began on a community playground.
Over the next year, 12,000 volunteers worked on the construction of the playground combining for an estimated 150,000 volunteer hours.
“We think the number of volunteers working on the community playground is so impressive because it represented one-fourth of Enid’s population at the time,” said Julie Baird, executive director of Leonardo’s Discovery Warehouse & Adventure Quest. “Almost every family in Enid played a part in opening the museum and building Adventure Quest.”
The 12,000 volunteers worked to build the playground, which includes a three-story wooden castle including bridges, slides, swings, mazes, a water table and dinosaur dig. It was the start of a strong reliance on volunteers by the nonprofit hands-on children’s art and science museum.
“We had about 360 individuals work as volunteers last year,” Baird said. “Volunteers help us with our camps during the summer. They help us with the garden at Adventure Quest. They help us on the floor of the museum.”
Leonardo’s has a wide age range of volunteers. Monthly training sessions are scheduled for new volunteers.
The Apprentice Program is for volunteers ages 13 to 18, who work with the summer camps. They also work on the flood of the museum.
“We normally have 30 to 40 students in the Apprentice Program at any time,” Baird said.
Leonardo’s has a volunteer program for grandparents and future teachers in the program at Northwestern Oklahoma State University’s Enid campus work as volunteers over the fall break and the spring.
The museum uses individual volunteers for a variety of jobs including maintenance, office work, special events, workshops, camps and on the floor.
Adventure Quest was built in one year with the 12,000 volunteers – only the architect was paid. Tom Rockwell, grandson of American artist Norman Rockwell and an architect for Leathers & Associates of Ithaca, N.Y., was the architect for Adventure Quest.
Adventure Quest has been designated the “world’s largest community-built outdoor playground” by Leathers & Associates, an architectural firm that specializes in community playgrounds.
Some of the 12,000 Adventure Quest volunteers developed a long relationship with Leonardo’s, including Baird’s son.
Ben Baird, then 11, and his dad were among the volunteers who worked to help create Adventure Quest.
“For years we would drive by and he would say, ‘I helped build that,’” Julie Baird said.
In 2007, Ben Baird was married at Adventure Quest. Julie Baird hopes that the family connection to Leonardo’s Discovery Warehouse & Adventure Quest continues with Ben’s son Oliver, who was born in 2008.
“My goal is for my grandson, Oliver, to bring his children here some day and say, ‘my daddy helped build that,’” she said.