SEQUIM — Want to paint a few of the city’s 565 fire hydrants, build a bike rack or pull some weeds out of city street landscape strip to improve the aesthetics of the community?
Then join the first National Day of Service in Sequim as a volunteer from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11.
After the workday, volunteers will be welcomed at a 3 p.m. dinner at the Port of Port Angeles’ John Wayne Marine banquet room, 2577 W. Sequim Bay Road.
For Emily Westcott, who plans to volunteer, every day is a day of service. Her reason is simple:
“It just looks better,” she said, kneeling over a weedy city flower bed, one she has weeded off and on for years at the corner of South Fifth Avenue and Washington Street.
She pulls weeds out of flower beds, hustles sponsorships for Sequim High School flower baskets downtown at $100 a pop, is president of the Museum and Arts Center board and sits on the Irrigation Festival board, among other things.
Westcott, a former Sequim Citizen of the Year, encourages others to support the city’s Day of Service, and she hopes to get in some weed pulling Sept. 11 before she supervises the Museum and Arts Center’s yard sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the field in front of the DeWitt Building on North Sequim Avenue across from Sequim High School.
The National Day of Service was founded by Jay Winuk, whose younger brother Glenn J. Winuk, an attorney, volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician, died in the line of duty in the collapse of World Trade Center in New York following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Winuk is co-founder of the nonprofit group, MyGoodDeed.org and led a seven-year campaign to formally establish 9/11 as an annually recognized day of service and memorial as a way to remember and honor the victims.
The Sequim City Council recently adopted a proclamation declaring Sept. 11 as the Day of Service.
City Secretary Karen Kuznek-Reese coordinates the city’s volunteers, which number about 100.
“We’ve got lots of stuff to do,” Kuznek-Reese said, and she hopes neighborhoods will organize and clean up their yards and streets.
She has already received commitments from the Sequim unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and Mayor Ken Hays’ family.
The city’s volunteer to-do list includes building benches for parks, streets and along the Olympic Discovery Trail, building bike racks, painting and landscaping the water reclamation facility, cleaning up Carrie Blake Park and Bell Creek, repainting the band shell, filling gaps in sidewalks and pulling noxious weeds.
The city already has volunteer groups maintaining Olympic Discovery Trail, the Friendship Garden at Carrie Blake Park and at several planting areas.
To volunteer for the National Day of Service in Sequim, phone Kuznek-Reese at City Hall, 360-683-4139.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
