Community Service in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
Photos by Caroline Bridges
SERVICE
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 19, 2009
WASHINGTON – Alden Hall, a physician living in Lebanon, was working the night shift on election night. “I was dealing with a patient in the emergency room at the hospital on November 4, 2008.”
Hall heard the nurses and staff shouting “so I ran down the corridor to see the victory on TV; there was so much excitement.”
Earlier that day, before the polls had closed, Hall booked for his family plane tickets to D.C. for the inauguration. “I was sure Obama was going to win.”
“This is a historic presidency and so we want the children to remember it and be a part of the inauguration celebrations” Hall said.
Now in Washington for the long weekend, Hall said “we wanted to be part of the continued celebrations.” Hall, his wife Marcy Chong and their two children, 5-year-old Khuan-Yu and 3-year-old Josephine, spent Monday morning helping clean the Forest Hills Playground in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington.
The cleanup was one of hundreds of community service projects organized by the inauguration committee to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day.
Carrie Cohen, President of the Friends of Forest Hill Playground, said “we’ve had an amazing turnout, much more than expected. Everyone had a job to do, from litter sweepers to raking leaves and sorting through broken toys.”
“Obama’s call to do community service in honor of Martin Luther King is a good one,” said Hall. “It is about changing our country’s perspective of giving back, by doing community service.”
“We need to get back that sense of self sacrifice in the tradition of doing what John F Kennedy advocated. Instead of nation building around the globe, we need to be doing nation building here in our own country” Hall said.
While struggling to climb up the playground slide, Khuan-Yu said, “Obama is good. He won’t start wars and he is going to get a dog for his little girls at the White House.”
“It is amazing that so many people will come out with their families on such a cold Washington holiday to do community service” Cohen said.
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