It became more important
By Scott Carpenter
It’s not unusual for Metroparks Toledo’s “Big Board,” a master list of announcements and events, to change as schedules and conditions evolve, but the 2020 edition could have been written on an Etch-a-Sketch.
A statewide quarantine during a global pandemic waylaid regular programming and scrambled plans for ribbon-cutting events for three new parks and a treehouse village, even as progress continued on those highly anticipated projects. What was routine at the beginning of the year—staying open, staying safe, and staying connected—took on new meaning in the park world by mid-March.
“I’ve always thought of my mission as special-events manager as bringing people together,” says Ruth Griffin. “With the pandemic clearing my entire year of planned events, I switched my mission to bringing people together without actually bringing them together.”