Great Days of Service 2008

The 2008 Great Days of Service has set a new bar for following years. This year the Great Days of Service project saw participation not only from Pryor but also the town of Adair. There were many service projects that took place between 8 a.m. and 12 Noon on Saturday, October 25th, 2008.

We first need to take time to thank the Leadership Pryor Alumni and the current Mayes County Leadership Academy for dedicating most of the time and muscle in these projects. Most of the leaders of the different projects were from previous Leadership Pryor classes and many of the volunteers were from the class this year. Thank you to everyone who has been apart of these classes, you are a tremendous blessing in this service to our county.

(To learn more about the Leadership Classes the Chamber offers click HERE)

Residents from Pryor and Adair teamed up to make this year's food drive the biggest ever with a collection of more than 10,000 pounds of food. With the help of Thunderbird Youth Academy cadets, volunteers hit the streets of the two towns and passed out empty sacks to all residents the Monday before the big day. On Saturday the cadets and even more volunteers collected them all and brought them back to the Church of Christ where more volunteers weighed, sorted and boxed the food up. We would like to thank Jerad Girten for heading this project up as well as the volunteers for sacrificing their time for this very worthy cause.

One of the focuses of this year's Great Days project was to incorporate more areas in Mayes County. With that focus in mind, Your Place Church headed up cleaning the Adair West Cemetery in Adair, Oklahoma. The church group, new to the Pryor area, mowed down weeds, cleaned tombstones and helped give this cemetery a polished look. Your Place Church and the Great Days committee hopes this project will allow relatives of those buried in the cemetery feel more accessible to their loved ones' memorials.

Local women donated their time and expertise to making baby blankets for distribution at the hospital in Pryor and medical clinics around Mayes County. These blankets will be provided to families of newborn babies in need. A big thank you goes out to Vikki Rush for coordinating this project.

The Mayes County Leadership Academy and the Pryor High School Leadership class teamed up to beautify all four welcome signs in Pryor. These signs, welcoming guests and potential investors to Pryor, especially during the summer time to Country Fever and Rocklahoma, were weeded, mulched and tidied up. It was their hope to provide a warm welcome for guests on their way to Pryor.

Another project the High School Leadership class took upon itself was the redecorating and landscaping of Safenet Services, a domestic abuse center for women and children. The high school students formulated a plan to redecorate a play room for children and landscape parts of the exterior of the building. The students held a toy drive at the Pryor High School to stock the newly decorated room with fun things to play with. Thank you to the high school leadership class and their teacher, Evette Barham, for heading up these great projects.

The Boys & Girls Club did a fantastic job with their project. They constructed and delivered care packages to many nursing homes across the Mayes County area. Boys & Girls Club youth made the care packages and helped deliver them. The smiles on the recipients' faces as the children handed them a care package hopefully will stick with these young people for the rest of their lives.

All of these wonderful projects could never have happened without the time and dedication from many volunteers. Thank you to everyone involved in this great service project. It is our hope that this even will inspire people young and old to do great days of service in their communities more than one day a year.