Todd Mansfield (at left) of "Stocks for Tots" worked with Jarvis Allen of Home Depot to add a decorative touch to the new playground behind Pine Lake Prep.

“Build Day” at Pine Lake Preparatory School Wednesday brought teams of volunteers to the campus of the area’s newest charter school for construction of an elaborate KaBOOM-brand playground, donated by Penske Racing executive Don Miller.

Excited school children watched from a safe distance, and cheered on the volunteers.  Nearby, parents help set up a special fence made from wooden silhouettes of actual students.

‘Miraculous’ timing

As Pine Lake prepared for the September opening at its new location on Hwy. 115, board chair John Moloney worried that there was no money for building a playground.

At the same time, Mr. Moloney’s colleague, Don Miller, a retired executive from Penske Racing, wondered what he should do with the new playground he had just won as the recipient of the first-ever Nascar Home Depot Humanitarian Award.

Don Miller, at left, posed with John Moloney Wednesday next to the Nascar show car for the "Stocks for Tots" charity.

“I had this playground and I wanted to bring it to the community,” said Mr. Miller as he stood on the campus of the prep school Wednesday. “This seemed like the ideal location.”

Behind Mr. Miller, parents and staff members worked elbow-to-elbow with Nascar teams and Home Depot crews to pour cement, shovel dirt, haul rocks, set up equipment and otherwise assemble an elaborate play area for the new charter school.

“The timing of this is miraculous,” said Mr. Moloney, who still seemed to be shaking his head in disbelief, even as the playground rose from the ground behind him.

Award for charity work through “Stocks for Tots”

The Nascar Home Depot award recognizes service among members of the Nascar community and comes with a $100,000 donation -  made by Home Depot  – to the recipient’s charity of choice.  The honor also comes with a playground in the city of the recipient’s choice, to be built by volunteers from NASCAR, The Home Depot and KaBOOM!, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit working to place a play area within walking distance of every child in America.

Mr. Miller received the honor for his creation of Stocks for Tots as a holiday event and fundraiser for Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN), an organization that provides education, counseling and intervention programs for the prevention of child abuse and neglect. The fundraiser brings together stock car racing and its fans to collect toys and raise money for SCAN. Since 1989, Stock for Tots has raised more than $400,000 and distributed nearly 40,000 toys to children in North Carolina and is now the largest fundraiser for SCAN.

Mr. Miller donated his cash prize to SCAN and his playground to Pine Lake Prep.

A playground, and a cool fence too!

Students cheered progress on their new playground from the safety of the sidewalk next to the lower school at Pine Lake Prep.

On Wednesday, rows of PLP children waved and cheered from the sidewalk behind the “lower school” for elementary grades as more than 100 volunteers worked at assembling the new play area.

Monday the students will be able to start playing on the new equipment, which includes slides, walkways, tunnels, climbing areas and other kid-friendly touches.

Volunteers have been working for weeks to design and prepare the site, but Wednesday was “Building Day” when the project could finally take shape.

Fran Tennant (in the silly hat) coordinated volunteers setting up a fence of silhouettes.

“We’ve had great volunteers,” said Fran Tennant, one of three “build captains,” who spent Wednesday assembling a fence around a water retention pond near the playground.  The fence project turned into a unique fundraiser of its own, with parents donating $50 to have a playful cutout made of their child.  Several hundred cutouts, in the hues of nature (blue for the sky, green for the trees and yellow for the sun), will eventually encircle two ponds on the campus.

With the main fence nearly complete and the playground taking shape, Mr. Miller happily surveyed the construction scene shortly before the lunch break.

“It’s absolutely great,” he said.