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Special Person: Julie Hall
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| Julie Hall on Mount Desert Island, near the Ovens |
Each year, on the last Saturday in April,
Friends of Acadia sponsors the Earth
Day Roadside Clean Up, working with
local businesses and individual volunteers to
clean up along our roadsides. In mid-April
2002, Julie Hall heard about the clean up
event, and knew it was something she wanted
to see happen in Trenton. With a fast
approaching deadline, she enlisted her family
and recruited her neighbors to pick up trash
along the Goose Cove Road. As she remembers
that first effort, "We could not believe
how much stuff was thrown out on the roads.
I was amazed - and stinking lame from all
the bending." A challenge to prepare for the
next year.
Julie is an involved resident and parent -
volunteering with the Acadian Football
League and serving on the Trenton Parent
Teacher Community Group - but that first
year's effort deepened her understanding of
the importance of this particular volunteer
effort. "My daughter and I were picking up
trash along Rte. 204 on that windy, cold
Saturday morning," she said. "The wind gusted
and dust blew all around us, and some got
into my daughter's eye. She rubbed and
rubbed, and I looked at it but couldn't see
anything. Anyway, I finally had to take her to
the eye doctor, and he removed a small bit
of plastic from her eye. He said that when
plastic gets run over and over it breaks down
and blows around like dust. What we throw
out on the roads is more than just mess. It
affects us in so many ways."
Since 2002, Julie has been the driving force
behind the Earth Day event in Trenton. In
2003 she measured the miles of state road in
town, discovered there are only 20 miles
("only" 20 miles), and began planning
how to get them all cleaned up for the next
roadside clean up. She recruits her neighbors
and friends, elementary school students and
parents, and high school students. She has
expanded the effort in Trenton to meet
volunteers' schedules - she will pick up
trash with volunteers the day before and/or
after that last April Saturday and arranges
work earlier on the "official" clean up day to
beat traffic on Rte. 3. Julie uses incentives -
she points out the spare change just waiting
to be picked up, sorted, and "returned"
and the hours of required school communi-ty
service that can be met by joining in the
volunteer effort.
Over the past four clean up efforts, Trenton
volunteers have removed more than 600 bags
of trash from their roadsides. "You can drive
along," Julie said, "and see that there's something
here and there, but when you walk you
see that there's more than something -
there's a lot lying out along the roads."
Anyone who has cleaned up a mile or so
of roadside generally can't drive that same
stretch of road without noting the latest
coffee cup in the ditch, or the plastic sheet
flapping against a tree trunk, or the styrofoam
square half in the ditch water. As Julie said,
"Whenever I see someone chuck something
into the back of their pick up, I just want to
tell them to go ahead and throw it on the
road. That's where it'll blow out to anyway."
That's one reason that recruiting students, and
neighbors, and family, and fellow employees
is so important. Trash gets picked up, and
caretakers are created - individuals who care
if litter blows out, is thrown out, or gets
dumped out on the road, making its way into
our larger environment.
In 2004, Friends of Acadia presented Julie
Hall with its Excellence in Volunteerism
Award for her "spirited contributions to a
physically cleaner region; her tireless work to
inspire kids to improve their neighborhood
environments; and her magical way of instilling
in them the highest, most durable values
of public service." May your volunteer numbers
increase, Julie, and the trash bag count
decline, as more of us share in your passion
for a cleaner community.
- Marla S. O'Byrne
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