Just in time for its annual festival, the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center welcomed a new playground with colorful equipment designed for children up to age 12 or so. Behind it, a surface has been freshly paved, large enough for the planned four pickleball courts and one tennis court.

Restoration of the previously removed basketball court will complete the core recreation area. But a walking trail looping almost all of the 13 -acre campus at its tree line is also planned.

Willow Hill Center leaders, three Bulloch County commissioners and Recreation & Parks Department members participated in a ribbon cutting Friday for the nonprofit center’s new, still unfinished outdoor recreation facilities, funded in part by a county grant. The 9 a.m. ceremony was the first event of this year’s Willow Hill Heritage Festival, continuing Saturday and Sunday at the historic Willow Hill School near Portal.

The $150,000 local grant, approved by the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners last fiscal year, was from the county’s remainder in federal ARPA, or American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 funds. Completing the planned recreational or “outdoor community space” on the grounds of the Willow Hill Center’s campus  near Portal will require about $100,000 more, said two of the center’s key leaders.

“Today we are so thankful to the Bulloch County commissioners for their generous grant to help us to help us to develop the outdoor space here at Portal,” said Dr. Nkenge Jackson-Flowers, secretary of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center board. “There has been a need in the area for recreational activity spaces where families can come and play.”

Jackson-Flowers and her father, the Willow Hill Center’s board president Dr. Alvin Jackson – both physicians and descendants of some of the historic school’s founders – emphasized that the center does more than preserve history.

‘A community …  place’

“We are more than a museum,” she said. “We are a community gathering place, so we  want all of you here today to feel that you are at home, because you are, and it takes all of us, just as we are here today, to make our communities a better place.”

Saying, “these are indeed hallowed grounds,” Alvin Jackson summarized the Willow  Hill School’s history from its founding in 1874 – nine years after the end of the Civil War – by formerly enslaved people who wanted an education for their children. The extant building, the Willow Hill School’s sixth facility, was an “equalization school” built in 1954 and remained in operation by the Bulloch County Board of Education – first as a Black school, then as a desegregated school – until 1999.

A group of the founders’ descendants purchased the school at auction in 2005, and opened the center in 2011.

Commissioner Anthony Simmons, whose wife grew up at Portal, and of course, Commissioner Ray Mosley, who has been involved in the Willow Hill Center from its establishment, spoke during Friday’s tent-shaded gathering before the ribbon was cut.

“On behalf of the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners, it is a privilege for us to be able to participate in opportunities like this,” said Mosley, who then did the honors with scissors.

Delayed arrival of parks at Portal

But Commissioner Ray Davis, whose home is in the diagonally opposite portion of the county, also spoke briefly during Friday’s event. As Davis noted, he worked as a coach at Portal High School from 1976-1980 and later served on the county Recreation Board.

In his years on that board, he said, Davis became point man for acquiring land for the Recreation Department, which during that time created parks at Stilson and Nevils and expanded the park in Brooklet, while also planning the Mill Creek facility at Statesboro.

“Now, in that service of eight to 10 years I felt negligent because I could not find land in Portal to build on,” Davis said. “So, when this grant (Willow Hill’s application) came before the county commissioners, I made the motion to approve. I felt like the  community of Portal was deserving, and I apologize for us not getting here something sooner, but I’m glad to see this project come forward.”

He noted that the county has now also “purchased some more land in the city of Portal and next to the city of Portal for he Recreation Department.”

Another speaker was Recreation Director Dadrian “Dee” Cosby, who has worked 27 years with what is now the Bulloch County Recreation & Parks Department and now leads it.

Rec. Dept. at Techie Camp

As Jackson-Flowers noted, the department has partnered with the Willow Hill Center in providing its annual Techie Camp.

The center receives continued funding from the Nordson Corporation Foundation and TechCorps for the one-month summer day camp for third- through eighth grade students. Instruction and hands-on learning projects focus on subjects such as computer science, robotics, 3D printing and digital animation

But the Rec Department’s role is to supply recreational activities, outdoors when possible, for an hour each on Tuesdays and Thursdays for four weeks.

Earlier in his career, Cosby oversaw the Recreation Department programs in the Portal area for 18 years, he recalled.

“So for me to stand here and say that we’re getting something here in Portal makes me feel really, really good for this community,” he said. “This is something that we at the Rec Department, we missed on, but now we’re trying to make up for that and trying to give you guys some great things here. It’s going to start with this here at Willow Hill. This is going to be an amazing area, and we look forward to doing whatever we can in the future with the Techie Camp and anything else.”

Portal park site

The additional land at Portal that Davis mentioned is a 50-acre tract near Portal Middle High, purchased by the county in June for about $950,000 for the Recreation Department to use in creating a Portal Community Park. It also includes a house the department proposes to convert to rentable space for events such as family reunions and birthday parties.

The plan for the park has little to do with the Willow Hill Center but was noted by Davis and Cosby as showing the county’s commitment to bring more recreational facilities to the Portal area.

Willow Hill vision

Meanwhile, Dr. Alvin Jackson’s vision for the Willow Hill campus expands to the walking trail, plus an area for activities such as horseshoes and beanbag toss, and more plantings to create the Dr. Gayle Jackson Gardens in memory of his wife, who served as the center’s development director. She passed away Aug. 25, 2023, and two years ago her memorial service was held there in place of the festival.

The $150,000 grant was “helpful, and the kicking ball, the stimulus to help get over the fence,” but “in no way completes the task,” he said. “The monies they gave won’t even cover what you’re already looking at. That’s why we need the continued support of the public. … It’s going to be another hundred thousand dollars, easily.”