ONLY IN LAWRENCE-ABOUT TOWN
L AWRENCE J OURNAL -WORLD
X Friday, April 29, 2011 11A.
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Good neighbors can make all the difference By Brenna Hawley bhawley@ljworld.com
What makes a good neighbor? Lawrence residents nominated more than 25 people who are the epitome of a good neighbor, whether they clear the sidewalks of snow or drive neighbors to the airport when they need a ride. Marcia Epstein, director of Headquarters Counseling Center, said that good relationships with neighbors can increase a person’s quality of life. “We’re going to feel better emotionally, and that often means we’ll feel better physically and we’ll be safer,” she said. Epstein personally experienced a good neighbor when she got a call in the middle of the night from a neighbor who had stepped out to smoke and saw someone trying to break into her car. “If we know our neighbors and we know a little bit about their routines, we can see that something is different, and it gives us the opportunity to check in on them,” she said. Here are a few of Lawrence’s good neighbors.
Kenny Click, 5000 block Keystone Court Kenny Click’s father taught him from an early age in small-town Mart, Texas, to help others. He and his father would help many people they went to church with by mowing their lawns and helping with other tasks. When Click, now 49, asked his father why they helped without being paid, his father replied: That’s what a good neighbor does. Click maintains that attitude himself, and is now passing it on to his own children. “If I know someone’s got a problem, we just help to help,” he said. “I’ve tried to teach them to go out and help without being asked.” Click has been such a good neighbor to people in Lawrence, even a neighbor who moved away lauded his neighborly attitude. Current neighbor, Dick Hale, said Click is always available with a helping hand. “They kind of adopted us,” said Hale, 81. “Part of it is his attitude. He likes doing it for you.” Hale said Click will clear lots of sidewalks in their neighborhood with his fourwheeler with a blade attached. When Hale went on
Brenna Hawley/Journal-World Photo
PETE AND CATHY SCHNEIDER often help their elderly neighbors with yard work, cleaning house and getting them to the airport or church. The couple are also active volunteers, especially with United Way and Family Promise. “All of us around here, if someone needs help, we help,” he said. And despite his age, Barnett keeps walking around the neighborhood regularly with his dog, Sadie. “He just never quits,” Peters said. “He’s like the Energizer Bunny.”
Kevin Anderson/Journal-World Photo
KENNY CLICK’S NEIGHBORS are grateful for his generosity. Click makes a point of helping others, including clearing sidewalks in winter. a three-week trip in February, he knew he didn’t have to worry about getting a ticket for his sidewalks not being cleared. During the summer months, Click keeps his land and another lot he owns completely mowed, and many neighborhood children use the land to play. Click’s giving attitude fits in with the small-town values Hale said Lawrence maintains. “I think more people should be that way, and when they are, it’s nice that they get recognition,” Hale said. “They’re not doing it for recognition. I know that’s not his purpose. He’s just a good man.”
Pete and Cathy Schneider, 4200 block of Harvard Road Pete and Cathy Schneider weren’t always close with their neighbors. About 11 years ago, their church started a group, and the neighbors all went. Now they’re all fast friends, and their neighbors feel lucky to have them. Pete, 60, has a range of tools, which he passes around when needed. He and Cathy have cut grass for neighbors who are ill, watered plants when they were gone and even powerwashed a neighbor’s deck. “You help the neighbor whoever you are,” Pete said. Cathy, 55, said growing up in a small town in Missouri instilled the importance of
Brenna Hawley/Journal-World Photo
Brenna Hawley/Journal-World Photo
DON BARNETT USES his expertise from owning a garage to help neighbors with car trouble, and is always willing to lend a helping hand with taking care of their animals while they’re on vacation. helping neighbors. “That’s just what you did,” she said. Marie Potter said the Schneiders helped many of their older neighbors, and had personally picked her and her husband up from the airport, taken them to church and done some plumbing at their house. “When you’re older, you realize you can’t do all that you used to do,” Potter said. “Sometimes you need help and you need to rely on people like that. A good neighbor is a very precious jewel for an older person.”
Don Barnett, 1700 block of East 1310 Road Twelve years ago, Sarah Peters and her husband moved to Don Barnett’s neighborhood. Barnett quickly became a friend. “He was one of the first people who stopped by when we moved in,” Peters said. “He’s just the friendliest guy.” Barnett, 82, was once the owner of a garage, something Peters said comes in handy when a vehicle breaks down. Barnett also cares for the Peters’ cat when they leave town. “Our cat is very stand-off-
CHRISTINE GRAVES is always willing to take care of her neighbor’s young child when needed. Graves said her neighborhood, on Prescott Drive, is full of people willing to help each other out.
ish and the only three people she will let handle her is my husband and I, and Don,” she said. Barnett said he learned to appreciate good neighbors when he was in the service and spent some time in New York City. There, he found that people who had lived next to each other for years hardly spoke. “Nobody wants to get involved,” he said. So now, he has a good relationship with his neighbors, helps when they need help and will share vegetables from his wife’s garden.
Christine Graves, 900 block of Prescott Christine Graves, 60, lives in a neighborhood where all the neighbors help one another. In the winter, she’ll use her snowblower to clear the sidewalks, and in the summer, neighbors will edge her grass. “People do stuff for me, and I do stuff for them,” she said. One neighbor in particular said Graves was a great neighbor because she was always available to take care of his 3-year-old son. Graves, a retired special education teacher, will go next door to put the boy to sleep when his father is late returning from work. She also will watch neighbors’ pets, and one week in March she was taking care of two cats, a dog and a parrot. “We just trade off,” she said. After living in the neighborhood for 21 years, she’s grateful for the bond that has formed among people in the neighborhood. “Everybody here is very considerate, because everything you do affects someone,” she said. — Reporter Brenna Hawley can be reached at 832-7217.
Lawrence parks, some obscure, ‘all have a unique characteristic’ By Brenna Hawley
Recreation spots around Lawrence
bhawley@ljworld.com
Ken Clouse walked his 6year-old husky, Juno, down a path at DeVictor Park. A few other walkers can be seen, but most people who use the park live in the neighborhood. It’s just a short walk for Clouse, who lives on Harvard Drive. “Almost daily we go down this trail,” he said. This park is one of 54 parks in Lawrence, and it’s one that Mark Hecker, parks and maintenance superintendent for the city, says is obscure. Four sites in particular are relatively new or hard to find, but they all offer something new for park-goers. “If you go look at some of these other parks,” Hecker said, “they all have a unique characteristic to them.”
DeVictor Park, 1100 George Williams Way This park, near Langston Hughes School, has many trails that wind around much of the corner lot and into neighborhoods as well. “People are starting to recognize it a little bit,” Hecker said. “It’s starting to get a lot of popularity.” The park was named for Fred DeVictor, once a director for the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department. It opened in March 2007 and includes an outdoor classroom, a playground, benches, picnic tables and many other amenities. Clouse said sometimes he and Juno met other dogs while walking on the trails,
Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo
FRED DEVICTOR PARK, just west of Langston Hughes School, is one of Lawrence’s little-known parks. and he is happy the park is so close to his home. “A very nice feature about Lawrence is all the trails that are paved,” he said.
Pat Dawson-Billings Nature Area, southwest of 27th Street and Crossgate Drive This area, which is at the southern end of Crossgate Drive, has ponds that are stocked with bluegill, channel catfish and, occasionally, bass. “I don’t know if a lot of people know that the ponds are stocked,” Hecker said. The land for the 42-acre park was a gift from John McGrew, owner of Wakarusa Land Limited Co. It’s named for Dawson-Billings, who taught in the Lawrence school district from 1960 to 1975. The park is on a floodplain
and is gated, but Hecker said people should just walk around the gate. Native grasses cover the areas around the ponds, including Indian grass, big bluestem and western wheat grass.
Lawrence Nature Park, 201 N. Folks Road As a park set near the end of Folks Road, Hecker said this fairly new park seems to have few visitors. “I think most people drive by it and think, ‘I wonder what that’s about,’” Hecker said. This park was the result of a gift of land and purchases amounting to 100 acres filled with different varieties of trees, grass, limestone out-cropping and hills. Reservations for the shelter can be made at any of Lawrence’s community recreation centers.
Parks 19th & Haskell Park, 19th and Haskell Avenue Broken Arrow Park, 2900 La. Brook Creek Park, 1200 Brook St. Buford M. Watson Jr. Park, Between Sixth and Eighth streets and Kentucky and Tennessee streets Burcham Park, 200 Ind. Centennial Park, 600 Rockledge Road Chaparral Park, 2700 Ponderosa Drive Clinton Lake Park, 1316 E. 902 Road Clinton Park, 901 W. Fifth St. Conrad & Viola McGrew Nature Preserve, 4600 W. 15th St. Constant Park, 230 W. Sixth Street Dad Perry Park, 1200 Monterey Way DeVictor Park, 1100 George Williams Way Deerfield Park, 2901 Princeton Blvd. Edgewood Park, Maple Lane & Miller Drive HAND Park, 1040 Home Circle Hobbs Park, 702 E. 11th St. Holcom Park, 2601 W. 25th St. Japanese Friendship Garden, 1045 Mass. John Taylor Park, 200 N. Seventh St. KANZA Southwind Nature Preserve, Wildflower & Inverness drives Lawrence Nature Park, 201 N. Folks Road
Parks such as this one offer a different type of learning for children who visit them. “You get them out playing in the woods, just walking and see what you can find,” Hecker said. “It’s kind of nonstructured play.”
KANZA Southwind Nature Preserve, Wildflower and Inverness drives This park is hidden at the end of a dead-end street, but it opens up to a pond surrounded by pathways cut
Ludlam Park, 2800 W. Ninth St. Lyons Park, 700 N. Lyon St. Martin Park, Peterson Road and East 1130 Township Road Mutt Run, 1330 E. 902 Road Naismith Valley Park, 1400 W. 27th St. Park Hills Parks, 500 Okla. Parnell Park, 901 E. 15th St. Pat Dawson-Billings Nature Area, 2700 Crossgate Drive Prairie Park, 2811 Kensington Road Quail Run Park, 1134 Inverness Drive Riverfront Park, Highways 24; 40 & 59, by the Kansas River Robinson Park, 4 W. Sixth St. South Park, 1141 Mass. Stonegate Park, 3706 Hunters Hill Drive Veterans Park, 1840 La. Walnut Park, 211 N. Fourth St. Water Tower Park, 1225 Sunset Drive Woody Park, 201 Maine
Future parks Burroughs Creek Trail & Linear Park Clinton Lake Leased Area Green Meadows Park Peterson Road Park Sesquicentennial Point
into natural grasses. “You can walk around down there and not see anybody,” Hecker said. Hecker said it would be a good location for people in a walking club. But for some people, this open park isn’t always the right choice. “Different people like different things,” he said. “Some people are looking for the standard playground.” — Reporter Brenna Hawley can be reached at 832-7217.
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