News & Stories
Courier-Post: Volunteers from Cooper, PSE&G build Camden playground
Volunteers work to build playground equipment at Whitman Park in Camden. (Photo: Phaedra Trethan/Staff Photographer)
CAMDEN – Eunice Williams has lived in her Whitman Park home, directly across from the giant water tower bearing her city’s name, since 1973.
The grandmother of five says her family was the first African-American one on her row of houses in this once predominantly Polish neighborhood. She, like her many elderly neighbors, has seen the Camden neighborhood, pocked by abandoned houses and the occasional needle on the sidewalk, change in her 42 years here.
“We’ll sit out on our porches for about an hour after dinner,” she said. “Then we go back inside. And we mind our own business.”
But Thursday morning, a little piece of the neighborhood changed, this time, residents hope, for the better.
About 200 volunteers from the Cooper Foundation, PSE&G, the Philadelphia 76ers and other local companies joined students from Camden High School, city officials and public works employees to build a playground in the shadow of the massive tower.