Amid rubble, he gave Iraqi children a place to play

The constant weapons raids and roadside bomb explosions began to weigh on the mind of Sergeant Lucas Murray during his year in Iraq. Watching local children play soccer, with artillery shells marking the goals, made the Boston parks architect think he could make a lasting contribution to the community simply by doing what he did for a living back home.

He built a playground.

With donations from a playground equipment company and muscle from friends in the National Guard, he constructed the park he had dreamed of, giving the children of Abraham Jaffas, north of Baghdad, somewhere to play other than trash heaps in a town still devastated from the invasion three years ago.

``The children of Iraq are the ones we want to grow up seeing us as the good guys, as opposed to an organization that came in to remove a dictator and left them worse off," Murray said. ``This was my strategy for helping the war effort on a humanitarian level. We built something permanent to leave behind."

Watching a video months later of Iraqi children grinning while breezing down slides and swinging from monkey bars among the rubble, Murray smiled and said that building the playground may be one of his life's great achievements.

It was a difficult, sometimes dangerous task. A bomb exploded not far from his base during a planning meeting for the park. Seven American soldiers died in insurgent attacks in the nearby Al Taji area 20 miles north of Baghdad during April, the month the park was built.

Murray put together a team of American troops, a dozen Iraqi soldiers, and more than 20 children from the neighborhood to dig ditches, pour concrete, and piece together equipment. The American soldiers worked for six days in full body armor, guns strapped across their chests, in temperatures of 110 degrees to finish the project.

It was important to Murray to get to know the Iraqis over falafel and tea, and to have the children who would be using the playground invest time in building it, so it felt like their own.

``The thought behind this was to work with them side by side, as opposed to giving it to them as a gift," he said. ``It meant something more than just the play structure itself. It showed them we could do something together."

Boston is spotted with Murray's parks in Mission Hill, Roxbury, and Dorchester, along with the artificial turf field at Saunders Stadium. Having a place to gather and have fun increases the quality of life for all members of a community, whether it's Boston or war-torn Iraq, he said.

``The one universal is that kids want to play," he said. ``The reason Iraq is such a desolate place is that there is nothing for kids and adults to do, nothing to engage them."

Murray joined the Rhode Island National Guard in 2000 after earning a degree in landscape architecture from the University of Rhode Island. He started at the Boston Parks and Recreation Department two years before he was called to go to Iraq with Company D, Third Battalion, 172d Infantry Regiment. He married his girlfriend before leaving for basic training. He is relieved to be home with her now at a house they bought in Hyde Park.

Angie Murray, also an architect for the Parks Department, where they met, said she is proud of her husband.

``He was able to end on a good note and feel like he truly made a difference," she said.