Serving Up A Better St. Joe!

By Jay Kerner

Every once in a while I catch myself falling into traps of negativity. One of our stated goals is to be “Pro-Joe” but it’s so easy to find negative things to write about. You don’t have to look that far. In fact you don’t have to look at all. The TV, the radio, the internet and daily papers all dish up a steady diet of doom and gloom. “If it bleeds it leads” isn’t just a joke for most media folks. Feel good stories are sometimes a little harder to come by. That’s why I was so pleased when this one came across my desk.

St. Joe is blessed with a caring, compassionate population. Individual charity funds are generously supported and our

Giving makes you feel good, and most of us do so to the levels our situations allow. Money talks as they say and any charitable organization will be happy to cash your check. But for a large group of local volunteers, hammers and paintbrushes became their method of giving last Sunday, as members of 19 local churches took part in the second annual St. Joe Serve Day.

Part of a larger, nation-wide program, Faith in Action, the local operation coordinates the church’s efforts with city resources. I met with Gerald McCush from

Last year nearly 1,000 volunteers worked on 14 different properties, mainly single family houses owned by individuals, either elderly or disabled. Houses were selected by the various congregations or could be nominated on the city’s web site. This year the number of volunteers is projected to balloon to between 1,200 and 1,500. The number of houses to be “made over” will increase to 19.

I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t heard about this event until I was recruited to help distribute paint and building supplies. I was happy to lend my puny muscles, and spent Friday afternoon schlepping assorted stuff from Home Depot to various stops all over town.

I only wished I had heard of it sooner so I could have maybe rustled up a few more workers, or at least helped spread the word so even more homes could have been nominated. Whenever possible at the Regular Joe, we like to promote an event in advance, so we can hopefully drive interested readers that direction. Writing about something like this after the fact is pretty common I guess, but too little too late to affect the numbers.

We need to get events like this down in the calendar for next year so we can get out front with it in advance. In the meantime, we tip our editorial hat to all the fine volunteers who helped make St. Joe Serve Day a fabulous new tradition to build on in our little river cit