State secretary, Key Club members take to streets to clean up

The thermometer was hovering around 90 degrees, and there was no shortage of trash along U.S. Highway 90 last Tuesday.

On a hot, muggy summer day, a spirited group of teens picking up garbage with Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne was the last thing passers-by expected to see. But there they were. Dressed in Key Club shirts and shorts, ready to work.

The group worked along a 12-mile trek, leaving a trail of orange-filled trash bags in their wake.

“We felt that U.S. 90 needed to be cleaned up a little,” said 14-year-old Casey Hollier. “This is our way of helping to clean Louisiana’s land.”

Vandebilt High School Key Club President Renee Rochel and Vice President Jonathan Martin spearheaded the trash day as a club service project.

Being a part of the Key Club is an extra responsibility for the teenagers; they all have other service obligations that take precedence over club events.

“They are going above and beyond what is asked of them,” said current Key Club advisor Chrystal Porter.

“As Key Club members, they are motivated to do service projects in the community. If it wasn’t a litter pick-up day, it would something else,” added Craig Schriever, a former Vandebilt teacher and Key Club advisor.

Schriever first heard Dardenne express his concerns about litter at the 2006-2007 Key Club Convention in Baton Rouge.

“When I traveled through Louisiana last year for my campaign, I had a white paper escort. That’s when I noticed that Louisiana has a lot of litter along its highways,” Dardenne said.

It was after hearing Dardenne speak at the convention that Schriever initiated a local cleanup effort.

Although parish inmates on work release programs regularly gather trash on U.S. 90, Dardenne said he was touched by the students’ effort to make the community look better. “I want to lead by example,” he added.

Making good on a promise to lend a hand, Dardenne left his address to Thibodaux Rotarians, donned a pair of jeans and T-shirt and began walking the trash trail.

“This is not in the jurisdiction of my office, but I feel that this is a problem in Louisiana and it’s important to be able to talk to youth groups about this and its impact on the economic development of Louisiana,” he explained.

At the Thibodaux Rotary Club meeting earlier in the day, Dardenne detailed his office’s efforts to identify displaced Louisiana voters registered to vote in other states.

“This needs to be dealt with before election time comes around. We can’t have people voting in two different places,” he told Rotarians.

Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne helps members of Vandebilt High School’s Key Club pick up trash along U.S. Highway 90 last Tuesday. * Photo by Sophia Ruffin *