By Tom Walsh

Hers is a dream with a name: “Jina’s Gym.”

Since her granddaughter’s death on June 20, Enid Neleski has been working to preserve Janina Haslam’s memory through an effort to build a new memorial gymnasium at Lamoine Consolidated School. STAFF PHOTO BY TOM WALSH

Devastated by the death of her 14-year-old granddaughter, Neleski couldn’t sleep for most of the second night after a June 20 car-bicycle accident on Lamoine Beach Road killed Janina “Jina” Haslam only days after she graduated from Lamoine Consolidated School.

“I thought about getting up as I hadn’t really been sleeping, and then I just began thinking about doing something at the school in Jina’s memory,” she said. “I started thinking small, like a bench or a tree or a flagpole. Then I just flashed on the idea of a memorial gymnasium because Lamoine really needs a gymnasium  that’s not so small.

 “When Jina was playing basketball, I sometimes didn’t go to her home games because I knew, with the seating situation, that it would be crowded,” she said. “I wanted others to have the opportunity to go.” 

That same small gymnasium was unable to contain the hundreds of well wishers attending a June 24 celebration of Jina’s life. Some listened from crowded hallways, others through a loudspeaker set up in the parking lot.

Those attending the event were invited to make memorial contributions to a new gymnasium or to a scholarship fund for Mount Desert Island High School students interested, as Jina was, in a veterinary medicine career.

Neleski went home from that event and started writing the countless letters and e-mails that have since lit a fire of enthusiasm for building Jina’s Gym.

“This is my vision, my dream,” Neleski said. “I’m just reaching out to as many people as I can think of, asking them to forward my letter to others who might be interested in keeping the spirit of this gifted and determined young teenager alive.”

Bonnie Marckoon, chairman of the building committee of the Lamoine School Committee, said a new gymnasium has been a priority for some time.

“There are two little sets of bleachers that can safely fit maybe 50 people,” she said. “People in chairs have their feet on the out-of-bounds lines and at times wind up with a lap full of child. The floor is asbestos tile glued onto concrete. When it’s cold, the condensation makes the floor so slippery that some referees have refused to allow games to continue.”

 So far the School Committee’s efforts to win state funding approval for a new gymnasium haven’t been successful.

“We’re now applying for a no-interest renovation loan, but that would only allow us to upgrade the existing facility, not replace or expand any existing facility,” Marckoon said. “It appears a new gym would have to be funded with public donations or grants from whatever foundations we can identify.”

Marckoon doesn’t know how much a new gymnasium would cost. Neither does Neleski.

“What’s important now is not how much we need, but to get this dream started,” Neleski said. “We’ll fund whatever we can fund.”

Marckoon has been handling donations through her position at the Blue Hill branch of the First National Bank of Bar Harbor. As of early this week, 33 donations ranging from $20 to $1,000 had been received for Jina’s Gym, totaling just less than $5,000. Another 72 donations totaling more than $5,000 had been made to the scholarship fund.

“Jina’s death is a shame and a tragedy, but it’s bringing the community together,” Marckoon said. “It’s been a fabulous way of building momentum for replacing a facility that is really not fit to be used.”

Neleski said she may organize a 2006 bike-a-thon fund-raiser to commemorate the first anniversary of Jina’s death.

“It would be an event in Lamoine for bicyclists, remembering Jina as a bicyclist who lost her life on a bicycle.”