After six months of renovations to the Michigan Gameday Experience — an indoor playground for children and their families on the eighth floor of the north wing at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital — the room reopened on Thursday, June 19.
To make it even better? Michigan football legend Charles Woodson was on hand to help cut the ribbon, play video games with the kids, sign mini-footballs for families and pose for photos with dozens of adoring fans.
“Good to be around these kids, spend a little time with them, talk with them and learn a little bit about them,” the 1997 Heisman Trophy winner said. “I met one of the kids, he was a star football player, played every position, but now he’s going to be limited from doing some of those things and was like, ‘Now I’m going to be a golfer’.
“He’s pivoted, these kids are dealing with things that makes them pivot, their families pivot. So being here today and be a part of this opening in this newly renovated space, it does me some good too as well.”
A Super Bowl champion after his time as a national champion with the Wolverines, Woodson has been affiliated with the hospital for nearly three decades.
Former coach Lloyd Carr, Woodson said, made it a point to all of his players to be involved in the community and do their part to make an impact on those who aren’t afforded the same opportunities.
Not only does the lobby of the building bear his name, but Woodson has held an annual fundraiser for more than a decade in downtown Ann Arbor — this year’s was scheduled for Thursday evening — for purposes such as this.
“For a long time in terms of resources and time over the years, coming here as a student-athlete,” Woodson said. (Thursday is the) event on Main. Been doing this for 10 or so years, a big block party so to speak. … Have a program, have some patients out, tell the story of how this thing started and eat have a good time and most importantly, make a ton of money for research. Look forward to it every year, can’t wait.”
As much as helping Mott means to Woodson, the only people it could possibly mean even more to are the families who spend hours in the hospital.
That includes Lori Silveus, of Pleasant Lake (just north of Jackson): Her 13-year-old son, Landen was diagnosed in December with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer than affects fewer than 1,000 children annually.
A basketball player much of his life, Landen developed the cancer in his left ankle, necessitating an amputation just below the knee in March.
Landen has undergone five rounds of chemotherapy, with the sixth and final treatments scheduled for late July. Each treatment is five weeks long, with the family spending Monday-Friday at Mott with only a break to go home on weekends. For them, having a place to get away from the four walls of his hospital room is a massive positive.
“This is very exciting for all of us,” Silveus said. “When you’re here in the hospital it can feel confined, can feel isolating and very lonely. A lot of times, things are focused around medical treatment, but this is a safe space for patients and families to come and get away from all of that, those sights and sounds they’re too familiar with.
“This is just such a joyful space, it feels very different than the rest of the hospital.”
Among the updates to the room:
∎ A new state of the art gaming center in a sectioned off area designed to look like the Michigan Stadium press box.
∎ An LED-lit “lounge zone” complete with a 75-inch flatscreen TV equipped with gaming consoles (on which Woodson was getting his “butt kicked” by one patient at Mario Kart just before the ceremony).
∎ Sports areas, including a basketball hoop, a putting green and an area with a football theme, as well as an interactive scavenger hunt, hopscotch and foursquare fields and musical instruments mounted to the walls.
∎ Stadium style chairs for more comfortable seating for parents.
But perhaps the biggest fulfilled request was an ADA-compliant swing set for children in wheelchairs.
“My office actually backs up to this wall, so when there are ballgames in here things literally fly off the wall in my office because they’re hammering balls into the wall,” said Luanne Thomas Ewald, Mott’s chief operating officer. “I have not heard that lovely sound in many months, so we are so excited this is open again.”
The renovations were largely funded through charity events like the Mott Golf Classic. That event, which has gone on for more than 50 years, has raised more than $10 million during its time, according to Patrick Dunn, the chairman of the board for the event. The Classic annually fills three golf courses with 400 golfers, all with the goal of improving the lives of young patients
“I look around the room and see the smiles on the faces and everything else,” he said Thursday. “This is what it’s all about.”
Tony Garcia is the Michigan Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Gameday Experience reopens at Mott Children’s Hospital with Charles Woodson
Reporting by Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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