By Jordan Moss

In the end, it was all about community.

The story line of the saga of the missing pop-up piano in Williamsbridge Oval Park shifted as the facts came out.

But when every last note was played, the result was a civic ballad celebrating what makes a neighborhood a neighborhood.

As the Norwood News reported two weeks ago, the pop-up piano provided by the nonprofit, Sing for Hope, in Williamsbridge Oval Park was reported stolen after consulting with local Parks Department staffers . But a few days later, detectives from the 52nd Precinct learned from witnesses in the park that that a Parks Department sanitation crew picked up the piano, thinking it was a discarded instrument.

After an inquiry form the Norwood News, the Parks Department confirmed they were responsible and issued this statement: “Parks workers unknowingly discarded the piano which appeared to have been vandalized and was lying on its side. We were just alerted to this today and we send our apology to the community and sing for hope if any trouble was caused by this.”

But before that admission, some reactions on the Bronx News Network blog illustrated a lack of surprise that a piano could disappear from a Bronx park.

“I wish you could bet on things like whether a pop-up piano left out unattended in the Bronx would be stolen, and if so, how long it would take,” said one commenter.

“This type of activity continues to give the Bronx a bad name and will make it difficult to bring any type of activity to parts of the Bronx that is not called Riverdale,” said another.

But the day-to-day story of the piano and what happened after it went missing didn’t fit that stereotype of an apathetic community prone to lawlessness at all.

It was volunteers from a resurgent Friends of the Oval volunteer group , who looked after the piano, and brought it nightly behind the gates of the tennis court. (It was not in the courts the night it was removed, because one of the volunteers thought it was unstable and worried that moving it might damage it further.)

And it was the Friends who decided that the potentially pilfered piano couldn’t stifle the neighborhood’s musical mojo. They posted an ad on craigslist and got the word out that they wanted a replacement. Someone responded to one of the news stories and donated it to the Friends, who rented a U-Haul to go downtown and pick it up. The next day they invited children in the park to paint it. Whenever it occupied space next to the tennis courts, kids were drawn to playing it.

“My son and I tickled the ivories this morning,” said park lover Annette Melendez on the Norwood News’ Facebook page. “Thanks for having faith in us.”

(The piano, though property of the Friends, will need a new home as participants recognize the piano will be vulnerable once the novelty wears off.)

There was another wrinkle to the story – as the Sing for Hope truck that picked up the 60-plus pianos throughout the city made its rounds, they mistakenly picked up the Friends’ piano, too, but returned it a day or two later.

Despite all the drama that everyone could have lived without, park advocates say the good news is that people want to make their park better:

“People are dying to have a reason to get involved and contribute to neighborhood cohesion,” said Elieen Markey a member of Friends of the Oval. “There were people who came out of the woodwork to help.”

And the piano was only one way the Friends got things done this summer. For weeks the group, fed up with months of delays, nudged, called and cajoled in person the Parks Department and its contractor to finish and open up the new playground and the spray showers that were supposed to have been completed last January. They wanted it open by the last day of school — and that’s what happened.

There are inevitable tensions between park advocates and the Park Department, but Markey says it doesn’t always have to be that way.

“They have a huge job to do with an ever-shrinking budget and we have a lot of passion and hopefully those things can work together,” she said, pointing out that with advocates behind them, the agency is better able to make a case for more resources.

On Monday, the Friends were holding up their end of the bargain, planning an impromptu trash pick-up party for that evening to get more people in the habit of keeping the park clean, especially the new playground which has been attracting litter.

Markey said on the group’s increasingly active Facebook page that there might even be some guitar music to make the task a little more pleasant.

Singing for hope, along with some old-fashioned community organizing, appears to be not just a program but an ongoing soundtrack for the Oval’s renaissance.