BOWDOINHAM

It’s a vision long in the making, born of a dream soon to become reality and certainly another example of that great line: If you build it, they will come.

The town of Bowdoinham continues in its endeavors to build a skatepark near the waterfront park, as the Community Development Advisory Committee works to help close the funding gap that remains. The town has raised several thousand dollars, but volunteer Seth Berry estimates another approximately $20,000 is needed to construct the park on the build-ready site behind the pottery building by the Merrymeeting Arts Center.

To help create additional interest in skateboarding, Berry and volunteer Wendy Rose, who is chair of the Community Development Advisory Committee, have taught skateboarding as an elective at Bowdoinham Community School as part of the four-week programs that take place Monday afternoons at the school.

The Bath Skate Park lent skateboards, as well as community members who have visited to help show students moves. Bowdoin Central School fifth grade teacher Steve Howe has strapped on a helmet and pads and helped kids learn how to “drop in,” and skateboard down a small wood ramp Berry built for the class.

There were three times as many students as they could take, Berry said, so this elective class had to be limited to fifth graders. For more than 15 years, Bowdoinham Community School has offered the elective program, said Principal Chris Lajoie. This school year there has been three four-week sessions and consists of community volunteers who offer interesting, different enrichment opportunities the students wouldn’t get in the school day. It started with a grant through the Arts Alive program and transformed overtime into the electives program.

In addition to skateboarding, this year’s electives included knitting, debate, juggling, origami, letterboxing, travel, theater arts, Legos, karate, puppetry and storytelling, clowning and even archaeology. Students get to choose the topic that interests them.

Jessie Whittemore, 11, signed up for the class because she said she likes skateboarding but doesn’t have anywhere to do it. She used to skateboard with friends when she lived in Vermont before she moved to Bowdoinham three years ago.

Her favorite part of the class has been turning on the board, she said. The elective runs from 2:15 to 3:15 p.m.; she said it is a time students can calm down from the frustration of their school work when they can chat with their friends as they take part in a subject that interests them. It’s a time to learn something new or in this case for her, to return to a sport.

“I think it would really be fun to have (a skate park), because I have no place to skateboard at all,” Whittemore said. “Being able to do that and going to some place that’s close, that would actually be really fun to do.”

Skateboarding since she got a skateboard for her seventh birthday, “I started practicing in my house in the kitchen,” Olivia Herard said. “I still do.”

Many of the kids interested in skateboarding don’t have access to a paved driveway or safe place outside to skateboard, so they practice indoors.

Herard said students practiced using longboards, in addition to skateboards, and they practiced the basics of falling safely and turning. Now she’s working on the most basic trick, called an “ollie.” She’s enjoyed watching her friends progress, most who had never skateboarded before.

“I’m jealous of other towns that have skate parks,” Herard said.

If the town has its skateboard park, “it will just be a really cool place for me to go,” said Anibal Berry, who also worked on his ollie Monday. “I’m there, I see my friends and we can just skate.”

Seth Berry said the future skateboard park is in the middle of the community, a centralized, controlled space children can go to skate, roller skate, inline skate or use their BMX bikes. As a fundraiser, people can buy a brick that will be engraved with their name used for the walkway.

“I feel like it’s a promise we need to keep,” Berry said.

Matthew Parker was a young man who loved to skateboard and didn’t have a good place to do it, so he’d skateboard down Main Street. He was 15 in 2005 when he very suddenly died of encephalitis and many people donated money towards a skateboard park in his memory. At the time it wasn’t enough money to build a park that would last and so fundraising continues and a new momentum for the park has begun. Berry is optimistic the town could have its skateboard park sometime next year and it should be a nice addition to the waterfront park.

If Parker knew a skateboard park was built in his memory, Anibal Berry said, “I think he’d be really happy.”

Join the Bowdoinham Community Skatepark Project on Facebook to stay tuned about future events.

dmoore@timesrecord.com