Beverly Parks Safety Steps With AED Donations, Holcroft Grant Approval

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly's parks should get a lot safer with one, in particular, also getting a lot more shiny and welcoming following the City Council's approval Monday night of accepting the donation of four defibrillators to be placed at city parks, as well as authorizing $609,000 in renovations for Holcroft Park.

The Beverly Youth Soccer Association is donating four AED defibrillators that Beverly Recreation Director Bruce Doig said will be added to seven others ordered for distribution to the city parks within the last week.

"Their donation of four units will go a long way toward helping," Doig said. "The goal is to have an AED unit in every park in the city. We were already anticipating spending $20,000 through a state earmark that we should be getting fairly soon for another eight units.

"We're going to continue to raise money, someway somehow, so we can get units in every park."

The mission to put AEDs in every park came from a collaboration of Kurt and Kelly Anderson following a harrowing situation involving their son, Daniel, who went into sudden cardiac arrest while playing basketball with friends on June 26, 2019. The 17-year-old survived because of the quick action of his friends and the mother of one of them who began CPR before Peabody Fire Department crews arrived within two minutes and were able to use an AED to shock Daniel's heart back into rhythm within four minutes of the attack.

The Andersons then created Ready to React to teach community members free CPR classes and help furnish schools, parks and other public places with AED machines through donations toward the classes.

"Hearing about the Beverly Youth Soccer Association's willingness to contribute to that cause was amazing," Kurt Anderson told Patch on Tuesday. "It looks like that by the summer of 2024 there will be 16 of them in city parks.

"That is pretty significant."

According to the Ready to React website:

• CPR pumps partially oxygenated blood through the body, preserving vital neurological and organ function.
• If an AED is used within the 3 minutes of cardiac arrest survival rates are between 70% and 80%.
• There are about 400,000 cardiac arrests in the United States each year.
• In the United States, the average Emergency Medical Response is approximately 8 minutes.

Anderson said success stories like Daniel's — as well as the high-profile cardiac arrest and life-saving measures performed on Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin after he collapsed on Monday Night Football last year — help create greater awareness about the importance of knowing and quickly administering CPR, as well as the critical role of an AED in that dire situation.

The key for the Andersons and other AED proponents is turning that understanding into a plan to do something about it.

"No one would ever say it's not a good idea," Anderson said of having AEDs in parks and at athletic venues. "It's about words into action. With Damar Hamblin, you would never wish that on anybody, but the positive results of having that happen right in front of everybody raised people's awareness. That gave us another talking point in classes and in meetings with community leaders.

"It puts it in the front of people's minds that this is something doable and has the potential to have such positive results. Overall, the cost is not overwhelming so it is manageable."

The Holcroft Park renovations will be offset by a 58 percent state PARC reimbursement and will allow for a new basketball court, playground, lighting, fencing and other pavilion and walkway garden improvements to the park that has fallen into disrepair in recent years.

Beverly Finance Director Bryant Ayles told the Council that the state reimbursement will cover about $400,000 of the project with the remainder expected to be covered through a donation from the Lynch Park Trustees and money in the city's Community Preservation Act fund.

"Ultimately, at the end of the day, we won't borrow a dime for this program," Ayles said.

According to PARC grant guidelines, work will not be able to begin on the park until July 1 but must be completed by June 2025.

Residents who spoke during Monday's hearing said the improvements will be welcomed for a park that is underused in the neighborhood because of worn and rusty equipment that may be dangerous to children.

"I feel like Holcroft Park, we've talked about it in this Council Chamber before," City Council President Julie Flowers said. "It's been a topic of conversation. The lighting was mentioned by residents. ... This is a great opportunity to get that done."

Monday's meeting also included a recognition and heartfelt farewell to outgoing City Councilor Estelle Rand, who was at her final meeting after deciding not to run for re-election this past fall.

"What I do know, and have learned, from being here is that every person I've met in the city who is volunteering, or works for the city, or has been elected to serve the committee, has the city's best interest in their hearts," Rand said, "and is just acting like it every day.

"It's been really special to be part of that."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)