National DAR Day of Service Activities

National DAR Day of Service Activities

Members of the Martha Dandridge Washington Chapter (MDW), National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR), focused on Conservation Committee Initiatives for National DAR Day of Service. In response to the “Sea to Shining Sea” Chapter Challenge, several members plunged into a cleanup of the original town spring in Dandridge, TN. While they were getting their hands dirty there, other members were recycling plastic bags into PLARN (plastic yarn) for sleeping mats for homeless veterans.

Since the Day of Service fell on a Friday this year, the chapter members chose Saturday, October 12, as their day to participate in special activities in honor of the anniversary of DAR’s founding on October 11, 1890.

Six Daughters put on rubber gloves and boots and picked up rakes, and MDW Conservation Committee Chairman Linda Null Bonner led them out to the spring where her husband Bill had already begun to rake detritus out of the shallow channel fed by the original town spring. Prospective member Janet Guyett got down on her hands and knees and even her stomach to cut back the ivy that was choking the watercourse. Plastic bottles, other trash, sticks, and leaves were collected in a wheelbarrow to be disposed of. Janet Chumney, Julie Duncan, MDW Recording Secretary Karen Bible, and MDW Corresponding Secretary Jane Busdeker completed the team that restored the natural beauty to the historic waterway that rises and flows behind Jim and Karen Everett’s Shepard Inn Bed & Breakfast, on through the TVA pump station, and into Douglas Lake. Legend has it that the fresh spring water was just what moonshiners favored for making whiskey and attracted them to Dandridge long ago.

While those Daughters spruced up the spring, others worked their nimble fingers back at the First United Methodist Church cutting, looping, and crocheting plastic bags to make PLARN for sleeping mats to be given to homeless veterans. Regent Jane Chambers, Treasurer Wendy Randolph, Melissa Rockefeller, Shirlene Morgan, Service for Veterans Chairman Carolyn Mitchell, Registrar Karen McFarland, and The Flag of the United States of America Chairman Pam Leatherwood worked on cutting hundreds of bags into strips, looping the strips together, rolling them into balls, and crocheting the PLARN into colorful 3’ x 6’ mats that will give homeless persons a soft and dry surface on which to sleep. When the ladies from the spring detail finished that work, they joined those making PLARN to prove the adage “Many hands make light work.”

For information about the DAR, contact Registrar Karen McFarland at (865) 258-8670 or Regent Jane Chambers at (865) 591-3857.

(L. to R.) Conservation Committee Chairman Linda Null Bonner, Julie Duncan, and prospective member Janet Guyett clear away rampant ivy from the Dandridge village spring.

(L. to R.) Melissa Rockefeller, The Flag of the United States of America chairman Pam Leatherwood, and new member Shirlene Morgan process plastic bags into PLARN.

MDW prospective member Janet Guyett and Treasurer Wendy Randolph crochet PLARN into sleeping mats for homeless veterans,

Submitted by Jane Busdeker, Corresponding Secretary, MDW Chapter, NSDAR

1767 Brookline Court, Jefferson City, TN, 37760

(865) 692-7172 janekaybus@gmail.com