Garth in The Zone
Brooks’ foundation helps provide oasis for hospital patients, families.
Garth Brooks often jokes that, thanks to his fervent fans, he hasn’t actually sung “Friends in Low Places” in 20 years. “I play the first four notes, done. They take it from there,” he said recently with a grin.
But the Country Music Hall of Famer actually couldn’t sing his signature smash when his recent home-state tour stop brought him into The Zone at The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center. Patients and staff at the Oklahoma City hospital covered the iconic country song as “Friends in Zone Places,” complete with an uplifting music video in honor of his visit.
“That’s cute. That’s awesome,” Brooks said, laughing with tears in his eyes. “I love it.”
Through theGarth Brooks Teammates for Kids Foundation, the reigning Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year, who was born in Tulsa and grew up in Yukon, is helping provide an oasis where ailing youngsters and their families can find fun and relaxation, even in the middle of a hospital.
“If I blindfold you and I take the blindfold off, you’re here, and we walk around, do you really think you’re in a hospital? That’s a great thing right there. You look outside, this play area outside, that doesn’t look like a hospital. It looks like a place of joy, whereas a hospital, we’re all kind of scared of them,” Brooks said. “Just the fact that our own surroundings kind of dictate what our body’s feeling, this is a wonderful, healing place for children, for the parents, for the siblings, for all involved.”
Healing through play
Before he played a record-breaking fourshow stand July 14-15 at Chesapeake Energy Arena, Brooks, 55, greeted about 60 patients and their families during an afternoon tour of The Children’s Hospital’s Child Life Zone, a state-of-the-art therapeutic play area on the sixth floor.
Brooks’ Teammates for Kids Foundation has helped build and improve Child Life Zones at 11 hospitals across the United States, but at 6,000 square feet, he said the one in his home state is the biggest.
“The fact that this home, you just kind of take a lot of pride in it, and you want this one to be the biggest one and the best one of all The Zones,” said Brooks, a board member and co-founder of Teammates for Kids.
Decorated in bright colors and staffed by Certified Child Life Specialists, The Zone aims to please children of all ages, with offerings ranging from a pretend-play kitchen and a foosball table to shelves lined with books and televisions hooked up with video game systems. The learning and play area receives more than 17,500 visits from patients and family members and hosts more than 350 special events each year, according to the hospital.
“We believe in the healing of the whole child, and having areas like The Zone helps accomplish that,” The Children’s Hospital CEO Jon Hayes said in a statement.
The Zones serve as places where patients
and families can get away from their worries and get needed social, emotional and developmental support. Brooks said hospital staffers have used the fun environment to develop creative ways of helping patients, including decorating anesthesia masks.
“The heart rate goes up in a child because they’re scared to death when the anesthesia mask comes on. So the doctors have to wait, and it slows down surgery. So what they do here in The Zone, they take the anesthesia mask the day before the surgery, bring it in, they get to color it, they get to paint it however they want. They wear it all day. They have fun,” he said. “So that next morning, they know that’s theirs, there’s their artwork. Put it on the child, their heart rate stays the same. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Improving, expanding
During his OKC visit, Brooks was able to check out improvements made in The Zone, including a new art room, multisensory area, Microsoft gaming center and even a television studio.
The studio allows patients who can’t leave their rooms to get in on the fun, from weekly bingo games to regular broadcasts of the “Wiggle Out Loud” live music show, co-hosted by local kindie rocker Chris “Boom” Wiser of the Sugar Free Allstars.
No stranger to studios, Brooks happily stepped inside for a special broadcast.
“We’re all in this together,” he said. “There’s the big question, the overall question of the human race, ‘why are we down here?’ … It’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ That’s the easiest one. We’re down here for each
other. That’s why there’s more than one of us. It’s to focus on what unites and not what divides us. I think that’s what The Zone’s all about; it focuses on what unites and gets us through these times.”
Through the Child Life Zone network, families and doctors of children with rare illnesses can make crucial connections, Brook said. That’s just one reason he is eager to see them expand outside of the United States.
“The Zones only live in two different countries, and our goal is to change that. We want to take these Zones worldwide. With God’s help … we’ll get that done,” Brooks said, adding that the foundation is preparing to launch its first Child Life Zone in Canada.
Making connections
As he made a steady circuit around the sprawling, cheerful room, the charismatic entertainer watched Jose Padilla, 16, play a carracing video game, teasing “We’re gonna have to work on your driving.” He amused Brendlee Noland, 9, with an unlikely tale of a runaway goat. And he admired a cellphone photograph of a striking landscape drawn by Ajay King, 15.
“Holy cow, I’ve got a brother who does pencil (drawings) and has done it for 50 years, and he would be dumbfounded at what I just saw. And that was just a photo from a smartphone of it; I can’t imagine what the real thing looks like,” Brooks said.
“He’s been here since October. Man, that’s tough. 15-year-old kid in here for that long? Hopefully, this makes it a little better place to stay,” he added. “I can’t imagine
fighting for your life and still dreaming big at the same time. That’s what these kids are doing, and The Zone is helping them get there. And that’s what makes me proud.”
He got to chat with some hometown folks as he visited Laney Culpepper, 3, of Yukon. The girl was happily coloring a cutout of a guitar with every shade of crayon and marker she could collect when Brooks made his way to the table she was sharing with her parents, Cory and Zoey Culpepper, and grandma, Lisa Culpepper.
“I love guitars,” Brooks said, taking up a blue marker at Laney’s chipper invitation and aiming at the neck of the paper instrument. “Do you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna stick the little frets in here. These things here are what you put your fingers on. Now, we’re getting to the part of the guitar that I don’t play anymore, way up here. You gotta be smart to play up here.”
The Culpeppers came to The Children’s Hospital in June after Laney’s kidneys suddenly failed for no apparent reason, her mother said. The girl now treks to the hospital three times a week for dialysis, and doctors are looking at a kidney transplant.
The Child Life Zone offers a welcome alternative to the confines of a hospital room, the family said, and the staff is comforting.
“I’m helping with bringing Laney up for her dialysis three days a week, and she’s not able to get out and play this summer like she has in the past,” her grandma said. “We’ll probably be coming a little bit early a couple of days and stopping off here to have a different, fun thing to do. I was very impressed with it.”