This news story originally provided by The Herald-Dispatch

April 26, 2005

Giving Mother Earth a helping hand

Weather doesn’t dampen spirits at annual Earth Day celebration

By DAVE LAVENDER - The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON -- It’s hard to keep a boy out of a creek -- no matter what age.

Jeff "Crawdog" Crawford, station manager at 93.7-FM, The Dawg, couldn’t help a countywide smile when he came back muddy holding the guts of an old record player he had fished out of Fourpole Creek on Saturday.

"It’s really just an excuse for grownups like me to get out and get to play in the mud," Crawford said.

Part of the Greater Huntington Park and Recreation District’s Earth Day celebration at Ritter Park, the clean sweep of the creek, which netted everything from tomato cages to plenty of plastic trash, was just one aspect of the event that also let folks exchange recyclable materials for free trees and let them gather info from some of the area’s environmental organizations.

The dedicated crew from The Dawg was joined by about 75 others including the MU women’s basketball team and an entire Communications class at Marshall that came out in pretty much miserable weather to pick up trash.

The first 50 people at the cleanup got T-shirts from The Dawg, 93.7-FM, and were also entered into a drawing for nearly two dozen items donated by local merchants such as Duncan Box and Lumber Co., and Lavalette Nursery.

Huntington resident Jay Bowen came out to the event because he feels passionately about keeping Earth beautiful.

Bowen, who used to pick up litter on his lunch breaks when he worked in Long Island, N.Y.., moved back to Huntington a year ago and has continued that tradition of walking and picking up trash.

"When I moved back a year ago I couldn’t stand the litter and the debris, so instead of just complaining about it, I tried to do something about it," said Bowen, who fills a 13-gallon trash bag in a mile walk.

Karla Eldred, joined by her boyfriend Nathan Howard, brought out her three children Britnee Stanley, 8, Destiny Stanley, 6 and Dakota Stanley, 5, to help pick up and to get some free trees to plant at her mom and dad’s fishing lake, Sky Lake, over in Chesapeake.

"We try to teach them that they need to learn to appreciate and to take care of the earth," said 26-year-old Karla Eldred. "A lot of people don’t do that anymore."

Folks who brought in recyclable materials to the BFI dumpsters could exchange those for dogwood, black walnut, tulip poplar, and two types of pine trees being handed out by volunteers Dorothy Kearns, Sara Staats and Carol Wolff, all from the Woman’s Club of Huntington.

Other people were busy planting seeds for thought and for later action to help the environment.

Standing strong in the wind and spitting rain, Winnie Fox and Michael Morrison, volunteers with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, brought out handouts on a range of environmental issues from the locally-based, but nationally-recognized environmental group which is featured in the PBS documentary, "The Appalachians," which is airing this spring around the nation.

At their table, they were handing out pamphlets on OVEC’s efforts to stop mountaintop removal, on the Sludge Safety Project, on the need for a bottle bill in West Virginia and on the multi-agency Mountain Justice Summer.

"We just want to keep spreading the word until they keep this in their minds," Morrison said.

Fox was also trying to stir emotions by handing out the "Declaration of the Four Sacred Things," (air, fire, water and earth) an essay by Starhawk that calls upon people and governments to protect the natural world and not just use it up for short-term, monetary gain.

"I’m giving this to everybody," Fox said. "People will look back and say, ‘What did we sacrifice?’ All the sacred things."