NEW ORLEANS -- Last month a shooting at the Bunny Friend Playground left 17 wounded, and over the weekend the last of the nine suspects turned himself in.
There is a lot more to this park than the terrifying shooting. It is a playground with a prominent place in New Orleans sports history.
The Bunny Friend Playground has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons. But beginning back in the 1950s and for decades following, this playground in the Ninth Ward was the centerpiece of New Orleans sports.
Bunny Friend was the place to be, largely in part because of Firmin Simms. He began the first of his 35 years with the New Orleans Recreation Department as volunteer coach in 1955. He instantly developed a booster club to support the kids and add teams.
"The people came out," Simms said. "And so we just grew and grew."
Within a few years, a handful of baseball teams became 34. Thirty-four full baseball teams of kids 9 to 13 years old, including kids like Rusty Staub, who would later play for 23 years in the majors.
"We just like a snowball running down a leg. The more teams you had, the more dads had asked to come out, and we had some good coaches," Simms said.
It's been more than 50 years since this group of guys played for the soon to be 87-year-old Simms, yet they and many others still stay in touch.
"He's still so involved. It's amazing" Ricky Suprean said. "The energy this man has still got, still helping people, still touching lives like crazy."
Simms went to Holy Cross and had five kids of his own but spent afternoons, nights and weekends at Bunny Friend, teaching them sports, life lessons and, as a devout Catholic himself, faith.
"Christ is first, teammate is second, and your mom and dad and everybody else is second. You're last, and we say that at every practice," Simms said.
And who remembers what a playground coach said to them decades ago? Well, anyone who played for Firmin.
"Who's first? God. Who's second? Teammates. And who's last? Ourselves. Teaching us to be an unselfish athlete," Doug Moreau said.
Simms was a big player in the growth of Biddy Basketball here and across the country, and the leadership of the Biddy leagues remain in his family today. Ricky Suprean played Biddy ball for Simms. Now he's coaching, as are so many others that Firmin touched.
"And so many of the kids that we coached, just like what he did, now they're coaches in high school or junior high, or Biddy Basketball," Suprean said. "It's amazing the lives that he's touched."
Firmin helped us coordinate getting some former players to Bunny Friend for our story. We did not expect a visit from the current playground supervisor Coach Larry Cook. As a kid in the mid 60s, Cook played at Bunny Friend. He didn't play for Firmin, who by then was, like him, the park supervisor, but he did play here because Bunny Friend was one of the first playgrounds to integrate black and white players.
"When I went to France school, I was called the n-word. But when I came here, I was never, never called that word," Cook said. "He made me think. He made me look at life in a different way. It's not the color of your skin, it's the character of a person, and that's what I learned here at Bunny Friend. And I always say that Bunny Friend will always be in my heart."
So much so that after Katrina, Cook took over the park, wanting to bring it back to its glory days and give today's inner city youth an opportunity to love sports as he did. He also wanted to teach them what Firmin's players learned - life, respect, and responsibility.
"The lessons that he gave us here on the playground here at Bunny Friend remain with so many of us for the rest of our lives," David Moreau said.
Firmin's teams won more than 50 district and state titles along the way.
"I can't tell you how much of a good time that was," Firmin said.
But it is the successful stories of life from his players that better define his time at this small playground in the Ninth Ward.
Bunny Friend Playground got its name in the 1920's. It is named after Henry "Bunny" Friend who died as a teenager. His parents wanted to honor him, and he loved the outdoors, so they donated the money to turn a vacant lot into a playground named in his honor.
