11 Sep Towne Park Volunteers Participate In “Serve to Remember” to Clean Up Annapolis Parks

Towne Park volunteers at “Serve to Remember.” Click the photo to view the photo album on Facebook!

Several Towne Park associates took part in the third annual “Serve to Remember” event on September 8, an International Coastal Cleanup project in Annapolis, MD that served as a remembrance on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.

The opening ceremony was held at the World War II Memorial in Annapolis, and included remarks from a variety of local and state political and military luminaries, including Senator Ben Cardin, Special Assistant to Senator Barbara Mikulski and Marine reservist Sarah Leming, Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold, Elizabeth Wyble, president of Friends of Anne Arundel County Trails and Navy Pilot Commander Brian Sinclair.

The common theme strung throughout the speeches acknowledged that although there was significant loss on that faithful day on September 11, 2001, the American spirit has endured, and remained as strong as ever. Buoyed by what they had just heard, Towne Park and the 300 volunteers proved this sentiment.

Several Towne Park associates joined the 300 volunteers, including 150 Navy Midshipmen, in cleaning debris, removing stumps, weeding, planting new vegetation and more at the Jonas Green Park and along the shores of the Severn River underneath the Naval Academy Bridge.

Rob Wellman, one of Saturday’s volunteers and a founding member of Towne Park’s Towne Green Environmental Committee, enjoyed his time on Saturday. “Cleaning up the park was truly a rewarding experience. For myself and the other volunteers, I believe we really made a difference to the park and for the community.”

During the opening ceremony, County Executive Leopold recounted Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote from the Gettysburg Address, in which the President told an audience of 15,000 that “the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they [soldiers fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg] did here.” After a morning spent making the community a cleaner, safer place in tribute to those who lost their lives 11 years ago today, one would like to think the volunteers’ accomplishments prove the underlying message of that historic statement.