Community Project - 425 Virginia Drive

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Lining the street with their cars and along the lake, there were 54 volunteers on the hottest day of the year, cleaning, painting and planting. The owner, through the encouragement of Robert Waples (Neighbors Helping Neighbors), applied to Rebuilding Together of the Palm Beaches and SWA's Paint Your Heart Out and her house was accepted for this make-over. Members of her neighborhood, ROLOH, as well as other members of neighborhood associations across our City and beyond, worked in the sweltering heat on Saturday.

Robert Waples has already received a donation for a complete home office/den set (its beyond nice, he says) and he is still looking for donated furniture for the living/dinning room as nothing is salvageable. He says, "Fortunately her bedroom furniture is not in the same condition and we do not have to try and find new bedroom furniture (still trying to get a mattress for Collier)." So if any of you have anything to donate to this worthy cause as well as a mattress for the Collier Avenue project, please contact Robert (561-909-8708).

This street has special meaning for me. Virginia Drive was the very first street on which I ever lived in Lake Worth. My Mom, a single parent who was secretary to one of the big wig commanders at the Air Force Base, bought a little house there in the 50's, the summer before my 7th grade. I think it cost all of $10,000 or $15,000--can't remember which. We watched it being built and would stand in the frame saying, "This is my bedroom." We didn't even have a tree. There was no grass or landscaping included. There was no air conditioning and we had a septic tank. We put in a well within a very short time to water the grass that we planted in the front. She did not have enough money to sod the back. There weren't a lot of chemicals back then, I guess, because my brother and I had to do yard work all of the time--weeding that back yard was constant and the weeds seemed to always be ahead of us. Our back yard was used to bury two parakeets. We did plant some fruit trees there, as I recall. Everyone loved oranges and mangoes.

Yesterday, this fabulous group of people turned out to turn a house around and to help a neighbor. Those living near the property are excited and many were pitching in with masks, hauling out everything in the house. The inside walls will be treated and the interior disinfected and cleaned thoroughly before being painted. I asked Joanna Aiken with SWA the color of the house and she said, "Mist Green. It is one of the 10 colors to choose from," she said. It is really a great color.

During past political campaigns, I always was greeted by a huge dog who barked his lungs out, pouncing on the front jaloused windows. During the clean-up she was tethered in the back yard under a tree and was as friendly as can be, wagging her tail and taking it all in. I guess she knew that friends were there and her home was being repaired by an awesome group of caring people.