Volunteers clean Candlers Mt.
Clean-up crew — Liberty student volunteers pick up trash and litter along Candlers Mountain Road as part of a community service initiative by Liberty’s Circle K Club, Wingate by Wyndham and Days Inn hotels. Photo credit: Tabitha Cassidy
Liberty University’s Circle K Club partnered with the Wingate by Wyndham and Days Inn hotels to help eliminate littler alongside Candlers Mountain Road on Saturday, Sept. 10.
Volunteers worked along a three-mile stretch of road from the Wingate hotel to Sonny Meade Road, starting at 8 a.m. Wingate workers doubled as citizen volunteers and ended their shift at 9:30 a.m., when Liberty students belonging to the Circle K Club and those who were just interested in some volunteer service picked up the shift from 10 a.m. to noon.
Brian Knopp, director of sales at the Wingate by Wyndham and self-proclaimed “chief garbage picker upper,” was among the many who came out to clean Candlers Mountain Road. Knopp provided beverages and light refreshments for the volunteers. The Hardee’s Restaurant on Candlers Mountain Road donated sausage biscuits to the volunteers.
“It’s amazing how many college students will come out on a Saturday morning when they could be sleeping in,” Knopp said.
Lew Weider, the faculty advisor for the Circle K Club at Liberty University, was told by a representative at the Virginia Department of Transportation that the section of Candlers Mountain Road was one of the dirtiest in the state. Typically, Weider mentioned, they collect 50 to 100 bags of trash each time they come out.
According to Heather Thomas, president of the Circle K Club at Liberty, Saturday’s clean-up yielded 37 large bags full of garbage. The bags of trash were left on the side of the road for the Virginia Department of Transportation to pick up and haul to the dump. Bottles and cans that were collected were recycled.
The Circle K Club provides community service throughout Lynchburg each school semester.
The Candlers Mountain Road clean up is organized and executed a minimum of four times per year. For more than 20 years, the Circle K Club has been keeping the stretch of mountain road clean.
“It’s just nice to know that you’re giving back to the community, to be able to go out to make a difference,” Thomas said. “We like to keep it clean.”