Letter From the Past: Community Service

In every community there are needs that are never met. When a need is not met it can either make change or cause destruction. Along with the Queensbridge Tenants Association, I have helped make that necessary change. The Tenants Association of Queensbridge Houses has set aside two (2) days a year in which residents can go and help clean up the neighborhood park if they would like.

On October 20,2001 I Michael Mitchell have decided to go once again and help keep the park clean. I knew that this year the clean up would be a little different due to the World Trade Center attacks. This year more people showed up than usual and attended the memorial service prior to the clean up. It seemed like the desire to help was in the hearts of everyone.

I had arrived at the park at approximately 10:00 am. Upon arrival I realized that the service had just ended and that the tenants were beginning to take out the clean up materials. The first thing I went for was the paintbrushes, trays, and etc. because I wanted to paint with my uncle this year. Once done taking out the painting materials I waited for further instruction. I was told that I was going to be using green paint and that I had to paint the benches down by the water.

Due to the fact that my grandmother likes to have all of her grandchildren helping and making a difference, cleaning up the park is sometimes like a family activity. With family around the things that you do together is more enjoyable. I already enjoy cleaning the park but seeing more people coming out year after year really motivates me to come back the next year. It took no more than one (1) hour to finish painting the benches so I proceeded to raking leaves.

I picked up a rake and began vigorously raking leaves. Within fifteen (15) minutes I turned to my left only to discover that my little cousin was at my side helping me rake leaves. With his help I did twice as much works as necessary in half the time. The only problem now was that we had left little piles of leaves all over the park. So we then had to walk around and put the piles of leaves into a garbage bag. This would not have taken long if not for a police helicopter landing in the park.

The police helicopter landed and caused all of our leaves to scatter again. We had to go back and try and get things back in order but first we had to wait for the helicopter to take off. Within a matter of minutes the helicopter took off further spreading our leaves and throwing dust along with sand in our faces. Once the parks atmosphere had cleared back up we had proceeded to neatly piling the leaves back up. This time however we managed to get one (1) big pile of leaves making to extra clean up easier.

We took about another ten (10) minutes or so picking up the leaves and putting them into garbage bag after garbage bag. In the end the park was more beautiful than ever before. It was almost as good as new. Looking out into the park you could see the finally exposed grass, the newly painted benches, and garbage bags waiting to be loaded on a truck and taken away. Once these bags were thrown in the back of the truck the clean-up was done and I was ready to go home happy.

Doing this community service made me real happy. It made me happy because people think that you do community service when you have nothing better to do. Most people see it as something that is boring and a waste of time. The way I see it, it is what you make of it. We made the most of it and now the park is beautiful once more.