Fourteen members and friends of the Shepherdstown Rotary Club turned out the morning of Saturday, March 15, for the Club’s 38th annual spring highway cleanup along Route 230 south of Shepherdstown.
They retrieved 21 bags of trash. Much of the trash consisted of pieces of drywall and other construction materials scattered along the stretch of the road where the new Shepherdstown Elementary School is being built.
The accompanying photo shows some of the members of the cleanup group. They are, from left to right: Gary Heichel, Marcia Brand, Johanna Bohn, Mark Duvall, Teri Biebel, Steve Choi, Rick Caruso, Walt Eifert. Not shown but also participating were Dave Miljour, Adam Thomas, Patrick Moriarty, Jim King, and Darlene and Brian Truman.
Jefferson County Sheriff Reserve officers Nick Crouch and Russ Voelker provided traffic control.
The Shepherdstown Rotary Club was founded in 1987, and it has been conducting this cleanup twice a year since then, once in the spring and once in the fall. The cleanup is focused on the two-mile section of Route 230 from the rail crossing in Shepherdstown to the Y intersection with Flowing Springs Road.
The cleanup itself began in 1985. A local couple, Conrad (“Connie”) Hammann and his wife Mary Ann, initiated their own twice-a-year cleanups of this stretch of Route 230 that year in response to an effort by two other local individuals, Polly Hockensmith and Peggy Sharp, to do something about the area’s most littered byways.
Mr. Hammann was a founding member of the Shepherdstown Rotary Club, and at his urging the Club quickly took over the Route 230 cleanup as one of its first community projects. Mr. Hammann coordinated the cleanup for the Club every year afterwards until he passed away in March 2015. Club Secretary Rick Caruso has coordinated the events since that time.
The State of West Virginia established its Adopt-a-Highway program in the late 1980s, and the Shepherdstown Rotary Club’s cleanup was immediately recognized by that program. The Club’s cleanup is believed to be the oldest, continuously running Adopt-a-Highway cleanup in the state.
