Park volunteers say rehab work going to the dogs

The first victim was a lacebark elm.

John Neugebauer was stopped by its mauled bark early one June morning during his walk through the lush park across from his Frankford home.

Weeks later, about half the baby trees throughout Overington Park's four acres have broken branches and stripped bark. And the big cherry tree near the entrance stands wounded, ripped open, bleeding sap, dying.

Since the weather turned warm, Neugebauer, his wife, Diane Kunze, and their neighbors have grown frustrated that the park they worked hard to turn from wasteland to oasis is under siege. They believe that one of their own has been using the greenery as a fight camp for pit bulls.

"It's kind of disheartening," said Kunze, head of the park association, while chatting with neighbors near the slide.

"You put in years of work to bring the park up, and one guy can destroy it in a summer."

Overington Park, at 1300 Orthodox St., used to be "a mess," said 40-year resident Lorraine Fortino.

Broken glass littered the play area. Homeless people slept on benches. Hollow-eyed prostitutes trolled the pathways. "And the drugs," said Kunze, 53, affable but no-nonsense. "It was a heavy drug area."

Kunze, an art teacher who has lived in the community for almost two decades and is a self-described fanatic gardener at home, felt the park "cried out for help."

In the six years since she founded Friends of Overington Park, the group has created colorful beds of perennials, sunflowers, and cannas. In just the last year and a half, it also planted 28 trees - cherry, hawthorn, yellowwood, chestnut, sugar maple - through public and private partnerships and with community volunteers.

The gardeners' toil gave the park a higher purpose.

Now toddlers take recess in the shade. Elementary schoolers conduct field trips. People visit for soccer games, football practices, picnics, walks, or just to sit and read. There are fall festivals over dried leaves and pumpkin patches, and workshops on seed planting and pruning.

"It seems the prettier the park is, the more regular people want to come in," Kunze said. "And the prostitutes and drug addicts leave because they don't want their business in front of everybody.

"I don't understand why someone wants to come and destroy it."

The neighbors believe they know the culprit: a big guy in his 20s who sits on a bench with two minions and the three pit bulls they allow to roam and sometimes spar.