 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|||||
|
|
|
Home > About Us > Corporate Citizenship > | |||||||
| Litter-Busting Lutz Elevates Quality of Life in Montgomery County February 2004
Last October, Dr. Richard Lutz was named "Citizen of the Year" by the Montgomery (Md.) County Mid-County Services Center, and the Forest Estates Community Association (of which he is president) was named "Civic Association of the Year." These awards were based on Lutz's years of hard work to beautify the area along the Georgia Ave. corridor where he lives. When Lutz moved to Montgomery County in 1990, he was thrilled with the neighborhood and location. However, he would drive up Georgia Ave. and be appalled by the faded street signs, graffiti, trash, ragged commercial flyers stapled to telephone poles, and uneven sidewalks. Finally, one weekend four years ago, Lutz took to the streets of Montgomery County with a pair of rubber gloves and a large plastic trash bag. By the time he walked over half of a mile down Georgia Ave. from August Dr. to Forest Glen Rd., the bag was full. While continuing the clean-up work in the weeks that followed, he also began removing illegally-posted commercial signs from medians and telephone poles. Although Lutz became a familiar sight around the neighborhood (motorists would wave), he found the job too overwhelming for one person to do alone, so he solicited help from his civic association. He started attending meetings of the Forest Estates Community Association and formed a committee of four or five neighbors who joined him on clean-up missions. When the group spent an entire Sunday on a grueling effort to edge a single lawn, they realized that the task of truly beautifying the street was too great for them alone. Last April, Lutz, who by this time had been elected president of the civic association, voiced his concerns about the area's upkeep to members of the County Council at a town hall meeting. The next day, he received a call from the director of the Mid-County Regional Services Center, who had heard Lutz speak at the meeting. Together, they formed a plan to get community, county, and state officials interested in the project, and the "Georgia Avenue Beautification Effort" was born. The effort has now expanded to include landscaping projects, improvements for pedestrian safety, and other indications of care and upkeep. "I can't live here and disassociate myself from the environment, "Lutz says. "This effort is about getting people to open their eyes to their surroundings." Lutz tells the story about a day he was picking up garbage when he lived in the Brookland area of Washington D.C. As he was gathering trash into his bag, a teenage boy casually dropped a candy wrapper at his feet. Without a word, Lutz picked up the piece of trash and deposited it into the bag. At the sight of this, the young man's face changed from obliviousness into one of contriteness, and he apologized to Lutz for littering. "We can make a difference. It's a cliché, but I really believe it," emphasizes Lutz.
Page last updated: April 9, 2004 | Top of page |
Solutions That Make a Difference.® |
|
|
