REALTOR® Volunteers Paint Downtown, Tidy-Up Historic Cemetery

olympia downtown cleanup
In 2015, Anna Schlecht (right) volunteered to clean up the downtown Olympia core with Alec Johnston (left) of Thurston County Realtors.
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Submitted by Barb Lally for Thurston County REALTOR Association

olympia community service
Realtors teamed up to paint downtown Olympia and were thanked by many business owners.

Painting over graffiti and mowing and weeding the grass around gravesites, Realtors were out in droves recently helping to make Thurston County an even better place to live.

More than 100 members of the Thurston County REALTOR® Association and their affiliates participated in their annual Community Service Day on May 28 offering their time and sweat to paint areas of downtown Olympia that needed it most. On the same day, dozens of local Realtors also volunteered for their annual clean-up of an old Mima cemetery.

“These Realtors and local real estate professionals took time away from work to devote to what they truly care about,” says Alec Johnston, broker and president of Prudential Olympia Realtors, who organized the event. “At the end of the day it is amazing what we accomplished.”

Businesses in the area partnered with the Realtors to pull off the full day of community volunteering. The sponsors were Home Street Bank, Thurston County Title Company, Allstate Insurance – Ronelle Funk and Marilyn Zuckerman, Prudential Olympia Realtors and Boggs Inspection Services.

Alec Johnston was especially thankful for the committee that helped him organize the effort: Diane Weaver of Dream Weavers Real Estate, Kari Hayes of Thurston County Title and Polly Barber of Prudential Olympia Realtors.

REALTORS® Made a Difference

olympia downtown cleanup
Alec Johnston (left) of Thurston County Realtors and Anna Schlecht (right) a volunteer with the Olympia Downtown Association organized the day.

The Realtor T-shirts sported for the day were not only splattered with paint and grass stains, they read “REALTORS® Making a Difference” and the participants certainly did.

Crews of Realtor volunteers joined by others from the Capital Recovery Center Clean Team and city employees were assigned to several locations in downtown Olympia and painted four alleys and two buildings. It was a “Volunteers in Paint” project driven by the Olympia Downtown Association (ODA), part of the City of Olympia’s “Downtown Project” to establish a clean, safe and welcoming environment in downtown.

Anna Schlecht, an ODA volunteer and the Housing Program Manager for the City of Olympia, helped Alec Johnston organize the Realtor paint project.

“Just like Huck Finn found out, people love to paint and love to help,” says Anna about the volunteers. “It is the community coming together to give back to our local businesses. It is the urban equivalent of a barn-raising where everyone joins in, in this case, to really help downtown and the businesses there.”

Several local business owners were so grateful that they offered the Realtors coffee, snacks and food throughout the day. “If you were just walking down the street with a bucket of paint, the businesses were thanking us,” one Realtor volunteer reported.

Brian Wilson, who is the downtown liaison for Community Planning and Development for the City of Olympia and a volunteer for ODA helped supervise the painting and marveled at the Realtor attitude and effort.

mima prairie cemetary
Realtors even cleaned the sign at the cemetery. Photo credit: Diane Weaver.

“This was the most successful Volunteers in Paint project we have had so far,” said Wilson, who, like Anna, took a vacation day to be there. “The Realtors are self-starters and they carried that spirit in their work for a great cause. They worked as a team and got the job done in half the time. Two and a half hours into the project, we needed more paint!”

Alec Johnston has organized the Community Service Day for three years and saw the paint project as a great way to help businesses downtown.

“I had been hoping for years that we could help paint over graffiti downtown,” says Johnston. “The city had been paying for that. Finally, this year we had the opportunity to not only paint over the graffiti but paint entire walls and buildings.”

Cleaning Up an Old Cemetery

Some Realtor volunteers travelled south on I-5 that day to help clear out weeds, trim back grass and tidy up an old Mima cemetery, something the Realtor association does annually.

“We were at the Mima Prairie Pioneer Cemetery that is land-locked in the middle of the Weyerhaeuser tree farm,” says Eric Prehm, a Realtor who took a full day to be part of the clean-up. “It truly is an amazing place with headstones from the late 1800s to early 1900.”

Diane Weaver of Dream Weavers Real Estate first noticed the overgrown cemetery over three years ago when she and her mom were bike-riding.

mima prairie cemetery
Brendan Marchant of Pillar To Post Inspectors brought his tractor/brush hog to help clear the cemetery. Photo credit: Diane Weaver.

“It was so overgrown with blackberry brush, weeds and grass, we thought it was a small area at first, but when someone started clearing it away, it turned out to be rather large,” explains Diane. “Realtors’ annual clean-up is a major portion of its care. Everyone again this year did an exceptional job making the grounds look beautiful.”

Alec Johnston couldn’t be prouder of his peers and the work they accomplished.

“The Realtor volunteers contribute to the quality of life of our communities and the work we do helps community budgets,” says Alec. “Realtors are all proud of where we live—the places we market every day in our business. The difference we made is clearly visible in Olympia and Mima.”

 

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