My name is Guy Richards and I am 27 years old. I grew up and still live in Egg Harbor Township and have been riding BMX bikes since I was about 5. There is a park down the street from where I grew up. I rode there all the time because of the love I have for riding. The only problem was that it was unsupervised. If I could describe what goes on with the kids there (ages 5-16), well.... it was just chaos. Almost every day after school (from 7th grade on), I would meet up and hang out with about 20-30 kids. We did a lot of drugs and got into a lot of trouble. As I look back at the kids I hung out with then, I cannot, in all honesty, tell you that they have succeeded in life. In fact, I have been to three of my friends’ funerals, all of which were drug-related. I hate what happened to those kids – so many people were affected, and for what?
My life has changed dramatically since those days. I can still remember that terrible Friday when my brother, Stephen, got pulled out of school and was locked up for selling drugs to an undercover police officer. I felt responsible because I was his role model, and he was just following in my footsteps. Sunday came and my mom was really hurting. She asked if I wanted to go to church with her. I didn’t want to go but I went anyway because of the guilt I felt - my brother was locked up because of me. I had never really bought into the whole God thing, but that day at church God gripped my heart. The message was on envy. ‘Enve’ was the name of the clothing company I owned at the time. I was shook. It was like God was talking directly to me! When the Pastor asked if anyone wanted to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, I raised my hand. I knew my life was out of control, and Jesus was the only one who could help me.
I’ll tell you what; it wasn’t long after that, that Jesus gave me a new desire and passion to do right. Slowly I stopped smoking and everything else that I found out hurt God. God started to repair my heart and gave me contentment in Him. I had searched for so long, not knowing what I was searching for. I tried everything to fill this empty feeling I had inside. But it wasn’t until I asked Jesus to forgive me of the wrong I had done and really believed He is who the Bible says He is, that empty feeling disappeared. This was hard for me to understand that God cared for me, because I thought God only cared for good people, and people like me were destined to have everything go bad for them. After I started reading the Bible for myself, I found that what I thought it meant to follow God was different from what most people on TV said. And it scared me that I might be called a JESUS FREAK!
About 2 years later, Pastor Tim (the lead pastor at Shore Fellowship Church) knew I loved riding, and told me I should head up a team to build a skate/bike park on church grounds. To tell you the truth, I was super excited, scared of the size of the project, and even a little confused that a pastor would even say something like that. So I didn’t really pursue it. But Pastor Tim kept bringing it up. Then about a year later, God showed my brother Stephen that He was real. My brother got so excited, he literally changed overnight. Not too long after that, Pastor Tim said to me, while my brother was standing there (in my words) “when you gonna get’r done?” That’s all Steve needed to hear. Steve had a small Stilh saw, and he started cutting down trees. That was about 2 1/2 years ago.
Since then, Shore Fellowship sent us out to Kansas City, Missouri, to take a 3-day speed course on how to build a “community bike and skate park” in detail. We learned first and foremost that it’s hard to get volunteers, but a great solution is to entice them with FOOD. Another thing we learned was how to bring the community together by allowing them to design, build and raise the money to get the project done. On the last day of our trip, we actually got to take part in building a kids play ground from scratch all in one day -- and on FOX News! The non-profit organization that held it was KaBoom, which has super corporate backing from Home Depot, Sprint, and Motorola to name a few.
So what did we do when we came home? We got pizza for the first meeting and invited people out. The next week Chick-Fil-A in the Hamilton Mall (then owned by Adam Marcus) jumped on board and fed us faithfully for two years straight. (Adam, if you are reading this, I believe it was those brownies that held a few of our board members captive.)
Well, since then, we have held JAMFEST ‘05 were I got to meet Ricci Branca and the other great locals who then worked so hard on building and promoting JAMFEST ‘06. These two events combined not only brought about 2000+ people out, with top skate and bike pros and about 60+ sponsors like Chick-Fil-A, WaWa, 7th St. Surf Shop, Center City Sports, Red Bull, but have also brought a community together. I really hope that this community will see how beneficial this Bike & Skate Park is to families and that God cares about these kids.
And finally, I say this from the whole SHORE FELLOWSHIP and PATMOS team….Thank you to all the small businesses, corporate businesses, hard-working locals and shoebies, all you moms and dads, and our township leadership. THANK YOU COMMUNITY! We love you.
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A. Egg Harbor Township is one of the fastest growing communities in Atlantic County, with new families moving into the area every day. BMX, Skating, and inline skating have steadily gained popularity with children and young adults over the last 10-15 years.
There are currently no suitable facilities for the young people of EHT to enjoy this type (ramp park & dirt jumps) of recreation in their community. In fact, the nearest park is located two towns away and it does not accommodate BMX bikers.
Therefore, many youth in EHT are forced to participate in these sports in unsuitable and unsafe areas, such as business parking lots and on the streets. The children are also unsupervised, and are vulnerable to drugs and other negative influences.
PATMOS PARK will be located away from road traffic and will be supervised by responsible, screened adult volunteers, providing a safe, drug-free environment. PATMOS PARK has the potential to change lives that could have otherwise been headed down the wrong path due to the negative influences that can be found in some of the other parks or on the street. Instead, these teenagers can grow up to be a positive asset to the community.
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