Rains challenge Sherman Great Days of Service
From left: Eva Braden, GDS Jerry Thompson of First Baptist Church, and Jim Lingo, First UMC, Sherman.
BY JOHN A. LOVELACE
Special Correspondent
Because of heavy rains, Great Days of Service (GDS), Sherman's showpiece of inter-church cooperation and community leadership, almost became Great Days of Survival during its 12th season, June 27-30.
Rain forced teenage volunteer would-be house painters to tote their buckets and swish their brushes in dormitory hallways on June 28, at nearby Grayson County Community College. In the city's oldest sections, some residential yards that ordinarily would have been raked, mowed and trimmed became "too wet to plow" and had to wait for GDS makeup days July 11-14. Mildewed tombstones in a Sherman cemetery didn't get their annual acid baths. Some 80 members of the Sherman High School football team reslotted their half-day's contribution to the makeup days.
The two big annual GDS celebratory events were held as scheduled: The opening prayer breakfast and the following day's Public Servant Lunch, a thank-you open to all city, county, state and federal employees in Grayson County.
Rains relented enough on the two other scheduled working days to permit scraping, painting, patching and fixing on many of the 14 needful homes chosen by city staffers. One woman who had long sought Great Days of Service help for her deteriorating house happily received a veteran two-man team assigned at the last minute to install new front porch steps.
Virtually all scheduled indoor programs, including a new reading program for children and the perennial delivery of an estimated two tons of donated food to the Salvation Army and Meals on Wheels, went off like clockwork. Also new this year was a first-time GDS/Habitat for Humanity linkage. Habitat crew chief Bob Montgomery, member of Grace UMC, estimated that GDS volunteers' work on Wednesdays and Saturdays starting in April "knocked five or six weeks off our regular schedule."
The 1,200 sq. ft. three-bedroom, two-bath home was dedicated Saturday morning, June 30, to be owned and occupied almost immediately by a single mom and her three children who met Habitat's standard criteria, including ability to repay an interest-free $50,000 loan.
The Great Days of Service/Habitat linkage came about in much the same way as GDS itself — as an idea sprung from the senior pastor of First UMC, Sherman, Rev. Jim Pledger. In 1996 he approached his pastoral counterpart at First Baptist Church, Sherman, Rev. Howard McNamara, to co-start GDS. Likewise, he invited Habitat to sign on with Great Days. Dr. Pledger serves on a local foundation that provides funds for both service groups.
Four other churches stand with the founders as GDS partners: Covenant Presbyterian, Harvest Time Assembly of God, Progressive Baptist and Saint Stephens Episcopal. Each partner church contributes $1,000 per year plus volunteer leadership and worker personnel. The local foundation provides most of the balance of GDS' approximately $15,000 annual budget.
As an illustration of "what goes around comes around," GDS partner church Harvest Time Assembly of God donated the vacant lot on which Habitat for Humanity built its 16th home in Grayson County.
Grace UMC on Sherman's western perimeter isn't a Great Days of Service partner church, but GDS gladly welcomed their home improvement crews and provided some of their supplies at five east Sherman locations. Grace Church also claims as members the Habitat for Humanity wheel-horse Gene McElroy, completing his 16th Habitat house in Grayson County alongside Bob Montgomery with his 6th.
No one epitomizes Great Days of Service's detailed planning and unflappable resilience to challenges (except downpours) than Nancy Russell. As First UMC's director of special programs, she estimates that, in a year, she spends 20 percent of her time on GDS, culminating in 100 percent in the final three weeks. She has worked in all 12, the first as a volunteer, the other 11 as everyone's can't-do-without.
Amidst constant cell phone calls, outbound and inbound; irony-tinged calls for bottled water for drenched but thirsty volunteers and inevitable shuffling of work crews she still finds time for a quip.
During a stop at GDS' donated food center at First Baptist, volunteers were wishing they could have had better containers than a variety of paper and plastic sacks. Her advice: "Send some Baptists to a liquor store and get some of those partitioned boxes. I'll explain it to you later. We’ll send a Methodist."
Even at that, she got off light. At one point it looked as if she might have to assemble a crew to build an ark.
“Don’t pull the trigger” was the main order to Great Days of Service coordinator Nancy Russell as she held the nail gun at Habitat for Humanity’s new home in Sherman. With her are longtime Habitat volunteer leaders Bob Montgomery, left, and Gene McElroy, second right, members of Sherman’s Grace UMC. At right is GDS’ outdoor activities coordinator Dick Spicer. His wife, Jeanne coordinates GDS’ indoor activities.
Sherman High School senior Victoria Curry does a white-out on a porch post as part of her Great Days of Service volunteerism.
