Nearly two dozen members and friends of the Shepherdstown Rotary Club turned out on Saturday, November 9, for the Club’s 37th annual fall highway cleanup along Route 230 south of Shepherdstown.
The accompanying photo shows some of the participants. They are, from left to right, front row: Michelle Maiden, Joy Lewis, Sherri Janelle, Carol Hill, Ann Barroner, Judith Wilson; back row: Termia Jones, Jack Lantzy, Kim Eifert (barely visible behind Lantzy), Walt Eifert, Gary Heichel Fritzi Martin, Sean Murtagh. Not pictured but participating were Jim Grenfell, Marcia Brand, Austin Slater, Linus Bicker, Greg Mason, Dana Orsini, Charlie Smith and Rick Caruso. Jefferson County Sheriff Reserve officers Rick Alderman and Rachel Combs 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. It is believed to be the oldest, continuously running Adopt-a-Highway cleanup in the state.
