Community donations received for Fireman's Park

Updates to Fireman's Park in Libby just made $100,000.

With a recent $75,000 pledge by the Libby City Council, efforts to update playground equipment at Fireman's Park secured this week an additional $25,000 from local donors supporting the effort.

Public funding will come from Libby's community development fund. Council member Zach McNew has been spearheading the project.

In private funding, additional community contributions so far include $5,000 apiece from business owners Bruce Weatherby of Sherpa Trailers and Ron Miller of Master’s Touch Electric.

The Rotary Club of Kootenai Valley chipped in $15,000 for the new equipment.

Atop the new play digs, Fireman's Park also will be getting a memorial swing to commemorate two late Libby locals.

Residents Karen Stickney and Jenny Wood told the city council last month they had been soliciting funds for the park to install the memorial swing.

The pair told the council in March they had raised more than $4,000 and asked that the swing be incorporated into the park's new play-equipment overhaul.

Two-seater memorial swings were originally conceptualized by Caral Hilliard to honor her son, Chance, who died in 2018.

Hilliard, however, passed away in December. The swing proposed by Stickney and Wood would commemorate both Hilliard and her son.