Mar 20, 2022
ROTARY CONTINUES ROAD CLEANUP TRADITION
More than a dozen people turned out on Saturday, March 19, for the Shepherdstown Rotary Club's 36th annual spring trash cleanup along Route 230 south of Shepherdstown.
The participants included Club members and individuals from the community. The accompanying photo shows some of them. They are: Front Row: Gary Heichel, Austin Slater and Matt Taylor. Back Row: Tom Miller, Steve Campbell, Dana Orsini, Linus Bicker, Fred D'Alauro Jim King, and Katherine Gillis.
The Club was founded in 1987, and it has been conducting this cleanup twice a year since then, every spring and fall. The cleanup is focused on the two-mile section of Route 230 from the rail crossing in Shepherdstown to the Y intersection with Flowing Springs Road.
The cleanup itself began in 1985. A local couple, Conrad C. ("Connie") Hammann and his wife Mary Ann, initiated their own twice-a-year cleanups of this stretch of Route 230 that year in response to an effort by two other local individuals, Polly Hockensmith and Peggy Sharp, to do something about the area's most littered byways.
Mr. Hammann was a founding member of the Shepherdstown Rotary Club, and at his urging the Club quickly took over the Route 230 cleanup as one of its first community projects. Mr. Hammann coordinated the cleanup for the Club every year afterwards until he passed away in March 2015.
The State of West Virginia established its Adopt-a-Highway program in the late 1980s, and the Shepherdstown Rotary Club's cleanup was immediately recognized by that program. It is believed to be the oldest, continuously running Adopt-a-Highway cleanup in the state.