Sherwood teams up with Boeing for annual spring cleaning and repairs

Not even Mother Nature could stop volunteers from working hard and getting the job done BY CHUCK TUCK | JOURNAL REPORTER

If you would have been told to expect snow in the middle of April would you have believed it? Well apparently neither did the 76 Boeing employee volunteers and a half dozen or so Sherwood Community Service staff members because they all showed up last Saturday to help Sherwood Community Services.

It was the annual Boeing Employee’s Community Service Day, and the thirteenth consecutive year that the Boeing employees paid a visit to Sherwood to clean, repair, and paint the center.

“For 13 years Boeing has been coming out here,” Janessa Bishop of Sherwood said. “Boeing sends out about a thousand employees for their community service day, and we get about 10 percent of them here.”

“There is no way we could have made these changes so quickly and efficiently,” Gail McDonald of Sherwood added.

The list of work done at Sherwood this year was exhausting; with the added new paint color scheme in most all of the buildings’ rooms, with the exception of the administrative building, cleaning of floors, and much more.

A local Hertz rental company loaned a wood chipper that was used to chip the dead trees and wood that was cut from the grounds into usable material piled more than six feet high. Another ten yards of beauty bark and ten yards of wood chips were brought in for landscaping in the flower beds and play area making the place look brand new.

Even board members of Sherwood like Shirley Johnston and Tom Hartwell came in early Saturday morning to do their part in freshening up Sherwood.

“We had a lot of people show up this morning,” Hartwell said.

It was truly a surprise to many of the staff members and even volunteers that so many people showed-up on such a cold and dreary morning.

Pakun Sin helped organize the Boeing end of things gathering the volunteers. He said it was much easier than he thought it would be to get the army of volunteers dressed in their blue t-shirts proudly displaying the Boeing Company name.

“It was simple,” he said. “All it took was sending out some email notices.”

The fact that many of the employees return to volunteer every year made the recruiting easy.

Sin went on to say that the event was sponsored by the System Engagement Team at Boeing.

It was visibly cold by the looks on the faces and the red hands of first timers Sandra L. Toro-Quinones and Jamie Lee Acosta as they huddled together painting the inside of a playhouse in the outdoor play area.
Both have been with Boeing for about nine months and jointly agreed they were happy to volunteer, but the weather was very cold and wet compared to their home of Puerto Rico.

As Bishop and McDonald stood talking, and looking at all the accomplishments that were done that day, Bishop expresses her gratitude for all of the help.

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