News you can use
News you can use
Volunteers have fun and make some unusual finds during their Havre Pride work. See Friday's Hi-Line Living.
Volunteers work Saturday behind Kmart picking up trash during Havre Pride.
Myles Steinmetz picks up trash Saturday behind the Havre Kmart during Havre Pride.
Kim Cripps was at the nerve center for Havre Pride activities Saturday morning.
That's not unusual. For more than two decades, she's been organizing the effort to clean up the city twice a year - at springtime and the weekend before Festival Days.
Community groups were invited to fan out throughout the community and pick a summer's worth of trash that had accumulated in open spaces, across fields and on streets throughout Havre.
They were supposed to come between 9 a.m. and noon, but the first volunteers showed up at about 8:30 a.m.
People picked up bags and other supplies from Cripps' headquarters at 1st Street and 5th Avenue and then went to their designated areas.
Boy Scouts and Wells Fargo volunteers went to the area near Kmart and Walmart, a spot that usually wins the yuck award for the most disgusting trash.
A group from Montana State University-Northern, headed by Chancellor Greg Kegel went up and down 5th Avenue and moved on to other areas.
A family went up to Havre Middle School area and started to clean up.
Another family went up 12th Avenue and east side neighborhoods to do their work.
"People with kids like that area because the traffic isn't so bad," Cripps said.
People returned to the command post to dump their trash in the giant bin Havre Pride provided and take the bottled water Cripps had for them.
It looked like Cripps was working alone, but she insisted that wasn't so.
"She's sitting right over there, Bonnie is," she said.
Cripps was referring to Bonnie Bennett, the consummate Havre volunteer who died a year ago this week.
"She's here in spirit,"Cripps said. "She would sit over there in a chair."
Bonnie would help people unload their trash, make sure they all signed in, got the right equipment and cheer people on.
She worked with Cripps for more than 20 years, since the first Havre Pride.
Last year, she convinced Kegel to convince a co-worker to give her a Havre Pride T-shirt, which she promptly put on.
Cripps took pictures of her carrying recyclable materials in her Havre Pride T-shirt.
They were the last ones taken of Bonnie.
Reader Comments(0)