Lauer, Guthrie help build a playground
NEW YORK – It’s the 9 a.m. hour and off-camera, Today show co-hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie are good-naturedly teasing each other about the day earlier this month they helped build a playground in Passaic, N.J.
“Matt had to do all the tricky labor when we were doing the build. Nobody really wanted to trust me with the bolts. I would do one and Matt was like, ‘You’re going to check what she did, right?’” Guthrie says with a laugh during a chat in Lauer’s office in Rockefeller Center.
Says Lauer: “We had engineers follow Savannah around and check all the nuts.”
But joking aside, the project – bringing a state-of-the-art playground to what was once a vast vacant lot in the center of Passaic – is one the anchors take serious pride in. The just-completed community playground grew out of the NBC morning show’s charitable Shine a Light program.
The Today show also has teamed up with USA TODAY on Make a Difference Day 2015 on Oct. 24. The annual event is the nation's largest day of community service as thousands of volunteers across the USA work to improve the lives of others.
Volunteering, says Guthrie, has rewards beyond writing a check. “It’s a classic situation where you get far more out of it than you put into it. It also is eye-opening in terms of how you look at your own life and what you think your problems are.”
The project began over a year ago with Lauer, 57, and Guthrie, 43, taking a group of Passaic kids to a leafy playground in West Orange, N.J., where they could let their imaginations run wild. In a touching video, the city kids talk about being afraid to go outside because they don't feel safe and of having nowhere to play. Some of their ideas – including a wishing well – were incorporated into the Passaic playground.
The city was chosen, Lauer says, because it has many needs and because community leaders were receptive. A non-profit organization called KaBoom!, which creates play opportunities for poor kids, signed on. Passaic held bake sales to raise money, and corporate donations helped purchase inventive, modern renditions of swing sets and slides and seesaws.
“Where it was gray, it’s now colorful; where there was nothing, there’s now something just inspiring and beautiful,” says Guthrie of the space across from a school.
As parents, it touched both Lauer and Guthrie to see the Passaic kids so happy the day the playground opened.
Guthrie’s daughter just turned 1 (“I made her a cake which let me tell you was an event in itself, because I am not known for my cooking skills”) and is just starting to walk. “One of the things I can’t wait to do with her is to take her to a park and let her play on the swings and meet other kids,” Guthrie says. “I think it’s something you can easily take for granted. And then you realize there are a lot of kids for whom that is just not an option.”
Lauer, who has three children, says he grew up in an ideal Norman Rockwell world and now has perks and privileges afforded a highly paid morning-show star. And he thinks that privilege should be used to help others.
“I can use the exposure that I have to make a difference in other people’s lives and sometimes it’s not that difficult,” he says. “Sometimes it just means showing up for a couple of hours on an afternoon and showing people in a community that you’re with them.”
Find out how you can join a project, or start your own, at makeadifferenceday.com.