Be My Neighbor Day volunteers help clean up Mount Pleasant

• Tweet
• 

Memories of her parents’ Mount Pleasant home flood Sandy Olson’s mind.

The house she grew up in at 306 S. University Ave., was built from scratch more than 65 years ago.

“It was a wonderful home to grow up in,” Olson said. “We had so many family parties, Christmases… (and) it was just joyous all the time.”

Olson and her mother Idonea Hersee plan to donate the house to the Mount Pleasant Area Community Foundation.

Their house was one of sixteen project sites around the Mount Pleasant area which were cleaned up during the Central Michigan University Volunteer Center’s “Be My Neighbor Day” Saturday. There were about 20 volunteers at each site.

Olson helped 30 CMU students, alumni, and Foundation board members sort items from her donated house.

The moment was a bittersweet one for Olson. She said her parent’s donation is something special.

Rockford senior Danielle Schmutz laughs with another volunteer from the CMU Volunteer Center while she takes a break from carrying furniture out of a home that was donated to the Mt. Pleasant Community Foundation Saturday on South University Ave. The furniture was donated to the Salvation Army. (Jeff Smith/Staff Photographer)

“I think it is important that their memory go on,” Olson said. “They’re important to me and I think the gift (of the house) is important to the community. It is sad to see it go, but it is going to a wonderful purpose.”

Amanda Schafer, executive director of the Mount Pleasant Area Community Foundation, said they are arranging the house into an office — Hersee House, the future home of the Mount Pleasant Area Community Foundation.

“We want to remind the community of our county’s history and build for the future. The Foundation allows us to do that,” Schafer said.

The Foundation gives grants to non-profit organizations within Isabella County.

“This would be a community space,” Schafer said. “We are preparing a place that people feel is like a home and we want people to feel at home with the Foundation.”

The volunteers on Saturday did everything from yard work to packing donated items into a trailer that was taken to Goodwill and The Salvation Army.

Rockford senior Danielle Schmutz helped with the house renovation by lugging wooden planks and other items up flights of stairs.

“I’m really excited to get this space available for the Foundation,” Schmutz said. “I think it will be really great for them to expand this area and be in more areas of the Mount Pleasant Community as well.”