Saturday, June 5, 2010

Service at St. Vincent Hotel

For this year's Hesburgh Month of Service, club members assisted with two service projects.  The first was Bundle Sunday at Incarnation Parish, and the other was a gardening project at St. Vincent Hotel homeless shelter in downtown Dayton.  This report will focus on the latter of the two projects.

Jackie Zofkie ('87) organized the St. Vincent Hotel project.  We received some significant help from Bud Hauser ('74), who was able to work with his client, Green Prairie Turf (located in College Corner), to donate much of the sod.

We did the event in conjunction with the University of Dayton Alumni Association, Dayton Chapter.



Sod was our first goal.  We laid over 400 square feet of sod in patches across the Hotel's yard where the grass had been stamped out. 



We spread grass seed over several other places.


We trimmed the trees. 


We pulled weeds -- so many weeds. 



We planted flowers. 



And we even served lunch to the guests.


Leigh Sempeles, Executive Director over the entire St. Vincent organization in Dayton came to check on our progress and say thanks, as did Ann Goebels, Director of the St. Vincent Hotel. 



We had beautiful weather, wet ground, and more volunteers than we expected.  Thanks to all who could make it:

Becky Camillus
Jack Fiala
Marty Foos
Mike Gazzerro
Joe Hollkamp and Family
John Krug, Sarah Krug, and Family
Stephany Roberts and Family
Gene and Carolyn Yankel
Jackie Zofkie and Family
plus many UD Alumni  (special thank you to Jim Ahrns from the UD club for his help in organizing this event)

We got done more work than we had planned -- and got done early.