Jarren Carr, 9, left, and Taronta Clayton, 8, play table football in a room that formerly had a wall-size mirror. The Sheila M Jennings Health, Wellness and Fitness Center on Poplar Street is reopening for business after cleaning up damage done by vandals.Fourth-grader A.J. Boyd takes the ball to the top of the key, goes left, then crosses over to the right.
His opponent, third-grader Marcus Reed, snatches the ball away. Clearly an illegal strip, but that’s not what matters.
The two came to Westside Recreation Center on Friday after Battle Academy’s school day ended. They came to play. But two weeks ago, someone, or multiple someones, took that away when they vandalized the recreation center.
When workers came in on Aug. 1, they found Coca-Cola machines tipped over, the center’s office torn apart, windows broken, mirrors along one wall shattered and a toilet in the men’s bathroom busted.
But workers at the center managed to repair the damage well enough so the center could reopen on Wednesday, the first day of school. For the first week, they worked without air conditioning because wires were torn during the vandalism.