By Vickie Wagstaff
What started in 2014 by the City of Fullerton as a community-wide day of service, dubbed as “Love Fullerton,” has grown this year to include seven North Orange County communities of Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra, Orange and Placentia.
By Vickie Wagstaff
What started in 2014 by the City of Fullerton as a community-wide day of service, dubbed as “Love Fullerton,” has grown this year to include seven North Orange County communities of Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra, Orange and Placentia.
Love Buena Park was spearheaded last year by Pastor Don Harbert of the Way Fellowship and Buena Park Police Chief Corey Sianez, in partnership with the city’s local churches, City Council and many local businesses.
The mission is to demonstrate kindness, meet needs of the community and impact lives by working together. This is the second year for the Love Buena Park event. Hundreds turned out on Saturday to participate in 32 different projects that were less than four hours long.
Volunteers helped wash police cars, spruced up neighborhoods, and clean up schools and parks. Opening ceremonies were held at The Source where volunteers were provided a free T-shirt, light breakfast and remarks from Mayor Beth Swift, Ph.D, and Assembly Woman Sharon Quirk-Silva before heading off to their various tasks.
One such volunteer was Jacob Wert, who was celebrating his 11th birthday.
Saturday marked the beginning of a new family tradition for Jacob and his parents, Ken and Jane Wert. Jane Wert said on a recent visit with her father, who is in a nursing facility told her a story of how her grandparents celebrated birthdays.
Her father grew up in Taiwan during World War II. In his family, they would use any money earmarked as "birthday money" to purchase large bags of rice. The rice was then taken to needy families in the area.
“I thought this was a beautiful tradition of service, showing that life isn’t all about us, even on our birthday”, said Jane Wert.
As the day ended, Jacob was asked to describe how he felt about doing service on his birthday.
"It was a very warm and good feeling inside and it was a lot of fun," he said.
