Chattanooga: Volunteers honor King, Obama

Today’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is an off-day for many, but some will be at work — just not their usual jobs.

“President Obama has asked us not to take the day off but to use M.L.K. Day as a day of service,” said Jayme Upton, volunteer coordinator for the Alexian Brothers Senior Neighbors program.

So that’s what she’s doing. Along with other volunteers from the Alexian Brothers and the Chattanooga Human Services Foster Grandparent Program, she will deliver canned food to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen this afternoon.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has urged residents to volunteer for service projects today in honor of Dr. King. With today’s high expected to stay in the upper 30s, volunteering for outside work may take extra dedication.

“Once you’re out there doing the physical activity, you’ll warm right up,” said Jeanette Eigelsbach, a board member of Chattanooga Audubon Society who is organizing a cleanup at Audubon Acres in East Brainerd.

Ms. Eigelsbach’s volunteers will work on eliminating privet, an invasive plant that chokes out native wildflowers. But whatever tasks volunteers are doing today, it all goes back to the holiday’s namesake, she said.

“I think it was Dr. King’s message of unity and community service that is something that persists to this day to honor his memory,” she said.

On their day off from classes, about 600 faculty, staff and students from Bryan College will work at 75 sites from Chattanooga to Spring City, Tenn. They will rake leaves, clean houses, build fences and pick up trash at cemeteries.

“There’s certainly the education that goes on in the classroom, but we approach the educational process as something that can go on outside of the classroom,” said Tom Davis, spokesman for Bryan College.

Southern Adventist University students also will volunteer, making blankets for children forced from meth houses and quotes and images from the cvil rights movement on school desks as part of an art project with the United Way of North Georgia.

Melissa Tortal, community service director at the university, said the holiday lasts only 24 hours but should be a reminder of a bigger commitment.

“We want to encourage a lifestyle of service,” she said. “Having a community service day is a way we can show that in our community.”

Mr. Davis shared the sentiment.

“We do it in a big, visible day one day of the year, but Dr. King was suggesting that this needs to be more on the matter of a lifestyle than just an event,” he said.