Great Green Granny: An Eco-Hero Meets the Road
by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY on 08.21.07
That’s right folks, at an age when many are looking for a comfortable place to sit and relax, 72 year-old grandmother of fifteen and great-grandmother of seven Marjorie Mead is just picking up the pace and the trash… She’s decided to make it her personal mission in life to clean up the roads near her home in Pennsylvania for free, and even with a smile despite the fact that the site of roadside trash littered about makes her blood boil. As she says, “It just made me angry to see all the garbage out there,” because “We have such a beautiful country. It’s a shame people think they can throw trash out the window.”
Now you might expect the dog days of August to keep even the greenest and most active granny down, but this one was out there on a recent morning with the thermometer topping out around 90, working away at what she calls a hobby. Dressed in pants and her pink blouse, along with a canary-yellow vest to increase her visibility to drivers, plenty of trash bags, and armed with a long claw-like grab stick to help her get to pieces stuck in places that are often hard to reach.
And it seems she’s making an unexpected impact on people around her as well, as those of a younger generation in her area have taken notice of her efforts. Just recently she received a letter from elementary students thanking her, in essence, “for cleaning up the world,” as one student put it… But public approval is certainly not the reason she gets out and gathers up to 15 bags of trash a week during her peak seasons of spring and fall. Instead, she does it because “It makes me feel good to make our community look nice.”
Perhaps she’s someone from whom we all can learn a lesson.
Marjorie's not alone, in fact she's in very good company. Green Seniors has an in-house Green Granny of our own (www.greengranny.org) and we are trying our hardest to make people like Marjorie seem like the norm.
There are so many people of advancing years who care about the natural world - the world that really matters, if we're being honest - and want to do something really positive. Maybe Marjorie will give them some inspiration. You can find a lot more at the Green Seniors web site.
Keith.
Hi
I really like your site and just wanted to let you know about the green granny site at http://www.granniesunited.com/green-granny/
You may not be interested but it would be wonderful if as a mother you wanted to write a page on green issues with a link to your site at
http://www.granniesunited.com/
Just a thought
Anyway best wishes
Clare at admin@granniesunited.com