Life

Volunteers hammer, paint and weed in Day of Caring

Jim Lillard, call center manager for Eaton Corp., uses a saw to cut a piece of siding at Dodd Meadows.

By Bill Moss, Published: September 13, 2013

Almost 300 volunteers fanned out across Henderson County on Friday to put in more than 1,800 hours of volunteer work during the United Way's annual Day of Caring.

The United Way kicked off its 2013-14 campaign with a breakfast at 7:30 a.m. at its new headquarters at the Kimberly Clark campus in Hendersonville. United Way Executive Director Ruth Birge announced that Pardee Hospital had delivered a check for $150,000 as this year's United Way pacesetter.
"We have 10 houses up and they're working on all of them in some fashion or the other," Ron Laughter, executive director of the Habitat for Humanity, said of the volunteers who came to Dodd Meadows subdivision. Crews in maroon Day of Caring T-shirts were putting up siding on one house and spackling nail holes and caulking door trim at another. "They're helping us make some real progress in getting a lot of them finished and ready to go."
The 284 volunteers from 24 organizations and businesses headed out to 36 work sites around the county to do everything from construction to landscaping to painting, said David Jacklin, United Way's community impact director.