Thousands lend a hand to celebrate the Earth and Love Modesto

Volunteers of all ages cleared, cleaned, toted and scrubbed, enjoying the sweat-on-the-brow satisfaction of a good deed done.

Saturday’s Love Modesto event drew an estimated 4,000 helpers, pitching in on 90-plus projects, organizer Jeff Pishney said. Pishney led a high-energy kickoff at I and 10th streets before ending with a prayer and sending helpers to their projects just after 9 a.m. Updates throughout the day were shared at #LoveModesto and on the Love Modesto Facebook page.

He urged the crowd to head to lunch at the Earth Day celebration in Graceada Park, where recycling, composting and public transit shared billing with kid-friendly activities and local food booths.

“This is good for the community,” said Maggie Mejia, people-watching on a downtown bench as work groups gathered for the Love Modesto kickoff. Mejia said she would head to a cleanup effort at Cesar E. Chavez Park with 10 fellow members of the Latino Community Roundtable.

Meanwhile, booths offering fun and freebies filled the street. The Modesto Nuts mascots danced. Paul Mitchell student beauticians cut hair.

Behind Mejia, long tables stood ready with art supplies to make cards for veterans, and small mountains of packaged food for Blessings in a Backpack.

Lines of Backpack volunteers filled some 1,640 plastic bags, two weekends’ worth of food for families at Everett, C.F. Brown and Wilson elementary schools, section leader Jenny Foster said. The program serves seven schools, Foster said, trying to cover the two-day gap for children who depend on free school lunches.

At the card art table, 10-year-old Grace Crabtree was supervising young artists in her first year as a Love Modesto volunteer. “I really wanted to see it. It’s really fun here and I just love helping kids,” Grace said.

Beside her, 9-year-old Noel Penwell admitted she had not initially wanted to help. “My mom made me volunteer,” Noel said. But she was having a good time, she added. “I like spending time with little kids.”

Plenty of parents prevailed upon their kids to join in the civic spirit.

“That’s what you try to do, get your kids to help out,” said Teagan Catlett, busy sanding cupboards to be painted at the Senior Citizens Center. She brought her 12-year-old daughter Mara, and her mother – a three-generation cleanup team. “Doing something not for ourselves,” Catlett said. “I’m just hoping it’s going to carry on.”

Outside, Mara looked up from cleaning tables with a smile. “I’m fine with doing this, as long as it’s helping someone,” she said with a shrug.

The senior center was getting some much-needed spring housecleaning, said Shannon Parker with the city of Modesto. “It’s been five to seven years. It was long overdue for some TLC,” she said. Touch-up painting, blowing pine needles off the walkways and cleaning the kitchen hood were on the list. In the next room, seven boys with Cub Scout Pack 37 were scrubbing down the center’s 300 folding chairs.

Across the street in the cemetery, families scrubbed century-old headstones with pumice stones and brought the color back to water-crusted marble. “People enjoy it,” said organizer and history buff Phil Blake. “It’s fun to read the epitaphs. They tell the story of something – we don’t always know what the story is,” he said, grinning.

“When you see the difference between before and after – it really makes a difference,” said Kim Hays, a veteran volunteer. She picked the cemetery team thinking it would be easier than her last Love Modesto chore, clearing trails.

One plot over, Nate Johnson, 13, said he picked the project because he has roots there. “My grandparents are buried here,” he said as he scrubbed energetically on the Allen family marker. Will Johnson, 10, was doing the same for the Grubb family headstone, dated 1909.

The boys also have great-grandparents buried there, said mom Jennie Johnson. “We’re born and raised Modesto,” Johnson said. She likes the good neighbor vibe of Love Modesto. “It’s a neat thing not every town does,” she said, a nice contrast to the bad news she hears too often. “I want to hear a lot more positive things about Modesto,” she said.

On the south side of Modesto, crews from Simile, CDC and Mill Creek construction businesses pitched in to help Habitat for Humanity, said project Director Trena Ochoa. She counted 133 people, including members from six future homeowning families, at two sites the nonprofit worked on Saturday.

On a normal Saturday, 15 to 20 volunteers come to help, she said. “This is proving to be our second-biggest volunteer event of the year,” Ochoa said.

“It’s a good tired,” Pishney said Saturday after Love Modesto concluded.

Pishney founded the Love Modesto day of service seven years ago. The tradition has spread to 60 towns under Love Our Cities, a mentoring program under Love Our Schools, a foster families recruitment program under Love All Our Kids, and a community building program called Love Our Neighborhoods. This fall, Love Modesto gained nonprofit status as Love Our Cities.

This story was originally published April 18, 2015 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Thousands lend a hand to celebrate the Earth and Love Modesto."