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Neighborly shovelers clear walks, warm up town
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Local resident Richard Zopf shoveled
the sidewalk in front of Anne Bily’s house on Elm Street after
Tuesday’s snowstorm. |
Waking Tuesday morning to a world of white,
Dee Krieg got a surprise when she peeked out her window.
Although six inches of snow caked cars and houses
as far as the eye could see, the sidewalk leading from her front steps to
the street was clear, as was the walk that runs parallel to the street.
While Krieg slept, someone had cleaned off her walks.
“I’m just struck dumb,” Krieg said
on Tuesday morning. “It’s amazing. Like a fairy came in the
night.”
It was the third time this year that the phantom
snow shoveler removed the fluffy white stuff and then vanished, leaving
behind clear, sidewalks for Krieg, who has a ruptured disc in her back and
can no longer shovel.
Across town on Limestone Street, Elsie Hevelin,
who is 80, faced the snowy day with the calm of knowing that her walks would
soon be clean. Unlike Kreig, Hevelin knows the identity of her snow shoveler
— it’s Tim Tobey, who called her at winter’s beginning
to say he would shovel her walks.
“He just called me up one day and said he’d
be coming when it snows,” said Hevelin. “I just think it’s
a terrific thing. You get to be my age and you can’t do it yourself
anymore. It gives me a lot of peace of mind.”
Tobey and Krieg’s secret shoveler —
the jig’s up, Richard Zopf — are two of the several men and
women in town who, when snow comes down, show up with their shovels, propelled
by a desire to do a good turn and make life safer and easier for the community’s
elders.
Tobey and Zopf are both members of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, which this year took on the project of shoveling snow
for local seniors. Community service is a large part of the group’s
mission, said Bob Fisher, who coordinates the snow shoveling project. The
group contacted the Yellow Springs Senior Center, which put the men in touch
with 12 seniors, including Krieg and Hevelin. The group’s intention,
said Fisher, is to pair one Odd Fellow with one or more senior for the winter,
so that the two can build a relationship that might extend beyond snow shoveling
Along with Tobey and Zopf, other Odd Fellow shovelers
are Tim Heaton, Mark Partee, Chris Kinter, Dave Robinow and Fisher.
Zopf said that he actually began shoveling for local
seniors several years ago, and he doesn’t see that it’s any
big deal. He likes shoveling snow, Zopf said, recalling his disappointment
as a boy because his family lived on Jacoby Road where there were no sidewalks,
and thus no opportunity for shoveling. Now, he’s making up for those
lost years.
“It’s a good deal all around,”
he said. “It’s one of those things that takes little effort
and brings pleasure and security to others.”
While some may question whether the effort involved
is small or large, no one who benefits from the snow shovelers’ work
questions its value.
“I appreciate it,” said Jim Finn, who
lives on West North College Street, where neighbors Rick Walkey and Ali
Thomas faithfully shovel his walk after each snow. Finn, who has had bypass
surgery, said, “If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be
able to do it.”
Like Zopf, Thomas and Walkey are modest about their
routine of shoveling most of their block after each snow, including the
homes of Roselyn Shaw and Bryan Gregor. Really, Thomas and Walkey insist,
they just enjoy shovelling. But they also appreciate the heightened sense
of neighborliness that follows, a neighborliness that works both ways.
“Bryan likes to give us things and Roselyn
made us soup,” said Thomas recently. “People are really sweet
about it.”
Actually, Thomas and Walkey said, they would like
to shovel more than they do, including up and down Xenia Avenue, but the
couple worries they might offend people who would read their action as an
obligation or an admonishment for not shoveling themselves.
“There are all sorts of issues,” said
Thomas.
Good neighborliness and an appreciation of her elders
motivates Nance Parent, who frequently shovels the Meadow Lane sidewalk
and driveway of her neighbor, Yasuko Kakehashi, sometimes with the help
of her partner, Meg Halpin, and children, Laura and Salomé Garcia-Halpin.
The most difficult aspect, Parent said, is convincing Kakehashi that she
really doesn’t want to be paid for her efforts.
“I get more out of it than they do,”
said Parent, who sometimes shovels neighbor June Allison’s walk as
well. “It feels good. It feels right.”
Mike Miller would agree that he drives his antique
Ford tractor with its snowplow into the village from his home on Grinnell
Road because doing good makes him feel good. While Miller accepts some “tips
and gratuities” for his efforts, he also plows many a driveway for
people who aren’t home and will never know that he did them a good
turn.
“Then I get to fantasize about what their face
looks like when they see it,” he said.
Miller spends a whole day in town plowing driveways,
fueling himself with hotdogs from Speedway. He drives up one street and
down another, looking for homes where snow has gotten the better of human
effort. At the end of the day, putt-putting back to his home at seven miles
per hour, he feels cold but wonderful, he said.
“For me it’s about helping each other,”
he said. “It’s that old feeling of community.”
—Diane Chiddister
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