A good portion of the volunteers who took part in the Day of Service work party at Sunrise Park on April 9 are assembled in front of the Sunrise Park pavilion. (The bronze tablet on the boulder is a memorial to the late Judy Stafford Scheitlin, park co-superintendent in the 1980s.)
An army of work teams and individuals converged on Sunrise Park for a major refurbishment project on Saturday morning, April 9, in spite of a threatening forecast. A rain date Sunday had been planned, but the Day of Service scheduled for Saturday was started a bit early, and the planned work organized by the Suffield Rotary Club was satisfactorily accomplished before some drops sprinkled on an early lunch at the pavilion.
Suffield Rotary President Jay Presser flips another burger for the volunteers’ lunch during the Day of Service at Sunrise Park.
About a hundred volunteers showed up. Along with every local Rotarian who was capable, plus the Interact Club, the volunteers included a crew from the Knights of Columbus, Suffield Ambulance responders, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Cubs, First Selectman Colin Moll, volunteers from the Highway Department and Parks & Rec, the SHS Sustainability Council, the Suffield Foundation for Excellent Schools, and Randy Harrington’s new Suffield Volunteer Clean-Up Group – there was undoubtedly more.
Depending on their interests and capabilities, the workers were directed to assignments scattered from the playing field and the beach on the south to the end of White’s Pond on the north – raking, spreading mulch, staining, repairing, even constructing, and of course preparing a warming fire in the pavilion and a cooking fire in the outdoor galley. By lunch time, the exercise trail was back in shape, the interior of the pavilion was freshly cleaned and stained, the Braille trail was usable again, the broken pew benches in the chapel were ready for the next step in their rebuilding when supplies arrive, the beach was clean, and much more. It was a successful morning’s work by a happy crew.