LH Press Library
He's Got His Pick of the Litter
Richardson Morning News, by Wendy Hundley
July 3, 2003
It's 8:30 in the morning and the heat is starting to shimmer off the asphalt. But Ralph Livengood doesn't seem to notice. He walks briskly along Abrams Road in northeast Dallas, picking up empty beer cans, cigarette packs, Styrofoam cups and other trash strewn along the busy roadway. He spots a fast-food wrapper in the median strip and dashes across the street with an agility that belies his 80 years.
"You can pick up all the trash in an area, and a couple of days later you'll find all this," said Mr. Livengood, a retired computer analyst who is on a mission to clean up his small corner of the world. He doesn't think he's doing anything special. He describes himself as an old guy who's tired of seeing trash mar the streets of Lake Highlands. But he wouldn't mind some help in his cleanup campaign. So far he hasn't had much luck.
In February, he created a group called ROTC – Retired Old Trash Collectors – thinking that other retired people would like to join him in his anti-litter efforts. He was wrong. "I wasn't able to get any retired old people to do it," said Mr. Livengood, whose cleanup initiative was inspired by an article he read about a bond trader who picked up trash on Saturday mornings. In May, Mr. Livengood tried to drum up interest in an area wide cleanup effort on Mother's Day. "It fizzled. We didn't get people to come out," he said. Still, he's undeterred.
He's retooling his volunteer group and thinks a new name might help. It's now Get ROTC – Get Rid of Trash Completely. "The purpose of the name change is to let people know we're now accepting all volunteers – young or old," said Mr. Livengood, who has gotten a handful of residents to sign up for 1-mile stretches in the area.
He's taking a stab at organizing another cleanup effort set for Aug. 2, and this time, the Lake Highlands Area Improvement Association has taken Mr. Livengood's campaign under its wing. The umbrella group, representing more than 20 homeowners associations in the Lake Highlands area, will help publicize his efforts at its meetings, and through its newsletter and Web site (www.lhaia.org). "I wish I had 15 people like him," said Terri Woods, president of the association. "He has a great attitude. He's very focused on what he wants to accomplish and he gets in there and starts working."
Mr. Livengood has adopted a 2-mile stretch along Abrams Road between Merriman Parkway and Whitehurst Drive. "I [clean] it a couple of times a week or whenever it's needed," the Merriman Park North resident said as he put an empty Camel cigarette pack in a blue plastic bag. Wal-Mart bags are the best," he said as cars zoomed by along Abrams Road. "They're a little bigger than other bags."
His record haul was 300 pounds of roadside litter he collected last month near the intersection of Abrams and Kingsley roads. When his grocery store bags ran out, someone at the nearby Montessori school gave him a large plastic garbage bag to collect the trash, sand and pulverized leaves. Mr. Livengood has some limits. He won't pick up cigarette butts, and he passed by the carcass of a squirrel. "I'll let the sanitation department do that. It looks like it's been there a while," he said, stopping to rest only once during his early morning walk. Mr. Livengood hopes that the new partnership with the Lake Highlands Area Improvement Association will inspire others to join the campaign. In the meantime, he'll continue to keep his 2-mile stretch of the city litter-free.
"I do it for the exercise," Mr. Livengood said. "And I hate to see trash on the street."
Reprinted with permission of The Dallas Morning News.
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