Play Bio - George Dusenbury, Park Pride

George Dusenbury

Executive Director

Park Pride

One thing that makes my play experience unique is that I grew up with an identical twin brother, Eric, who was always there to play with me.  No need to call a friend.  No excuse for being bored.  I always had someone to play with, and boy did we play!

We didn’t spend much time playing on playgrounds because we didn’t have many.  Even my school didn’t have a playground, but it did have an area we all called “Down the Hill.”  That is all it was – though with our imagination, it became much more.  We would go down the hill, across a creek, over a huge fallen tree and into what seemed like the biggest and best playground any school could have.  We would build forts out of rocks and fallen branches, play tag and otherwise run around like chickens with our heads cut off.  No child had more fun.

At home, we had the woods behind our house.  We built a tree house out of lumber salvaged from nearby construction sites.  We dammed up the creeks.  We built houses out of branches and pine straw. The woods were so big; we never made it to the other side.

One of our favorite things to do was to take my dad’s rakes and other tools and built lots and lots of “roads” that we named after the streets of Chapel Hill, where I grew up.  We were not the best at returning the tools after our road-building, which got us into trouble more than once.  Dad solved this problem by painting all his tools with the brightest, most colorful paint he could find.  Then he could walk through the woods and easily see his tools among all the fallen leaves.

The back woods also were a place to hunt for animals, especially snakes and frogs.  One day we pulled a six foot black snake out of a hole by its tail – then somehow put it in a milk carton for the trip back home.  We caught a baby copperhead in a bucket, foiling its escape attempts by knocking it back in with our bare hands.  Then some workmen came by, asked what we were doing and killed the snake (copperheads are venomous, so a lot of people are afraid of them).

By the time we were twelve, my mom would drive us to an even bigger creek and drop us off to hunt frogs and snakes for hours on end.  It was a great place to catch leopard frogs!  Making the trip even more exciting was the little general store that sold Coke and five-cent lollipops.

Play was not just time in the woods.  We grew up in a neighborhood with lots and lots of boys.  We would roam the neighborhood streets, knocking on doors to get enough kids to play football or fox and geese in the Becker’s yard, basketball at the Abernathy’s house, or roller bat in the street.  We would don skates, tie ropes to the back of our bikes and “Roller Ski” down the giant hill in front of our house.  In 1976, we even staged our own Olympic games, using my dad’s sawhorses for hurdles.

Eventually we grew up, and I ended up moving to New York City, the biggest City in the country.  I had no money, so entertainment usually meant spending time in the park.  One of the highlights of my time in the Big City happened when my roommates and I were playing football in Central Park.  We looked up, and who was watching us?  Bill Cosby!  This was when The Cosby Show was the number one show on television.  Now that is what parks are all about.  One of the richest, most successful people in the world watching three poor, recent college graduates rolling around in the grass and dirt.

Now I am the head of Park Pride, an organization that wants to make parks and play spaces available to every child in Atlanta.  Every day, we work to create more and better parks, more and better woods, and more and better play spaces for Atlanta kids and adults alike.

When I get home, my wife Courtenay and I take our two sons, George and William, to Candler Park where we swim, play tennis, roam the playground, tramp through the creek and build forts on the hillside.  We explore nearby Frazier Forest, where I have half-crawled through the very long creek tunnel under Ponce de Leon Avenue.

My hopes and dreams for Atlanta’s kids is that they will have safe places to play, explore and have fun.  That their parents will take them to these places and play with them.  That, when the kids get older, they will strike out for the woods or ball fields on their own.  That every Atlanta child will catch a frog, lizard or snake.  That they will create their own Olympic games – and that our City leaders will build and maintain the parks and other play spaces that will make this all possible.