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LIGHTNING PHOTOS: Volunteers deploy for Day of Action

Volunteers load school supplies from Pardee truck to a school bus. The "stuff the bus" effort received thousands of donations of supplies and food for weekend takehome backpacks for needy children.

By Bill Moss, Published: August 19, 2016

Five hundred volunteers congregated at Hendersonville High School's football stadium under an overcast sky early Friday to make sure the first day of school is a little brighter for Henderson County children.

Sponsored by Pardee Hospital and coordinated by the United Way, the county's first Day of Action deployed volunteers to 23 public schools and two learning centers to paint walls, landscape, spread mulch, trim weeds and complete other jobs to get the facilities sparkling for the first day of school on Aug. 29. By the end of the day, 46 projects will have been done.

"This is the first time anything of this scale has happened for all the schools," said Denise Long, executive director of the United Way.

Schools Superintendent Bo Caldwell said the turnout was on the one hand impressive and on the other typical. AAs a Henderson County native Caldwell said he had seen the community step up time and again to help.

"Thank you is going to be said over and over today," he said. "As far as the work, some of it would go undone."

Schoolyards might be a little more ragged around the edges, walls a little drabber and flowerbeds a bit weedy if not for the volunteer force, which came together because dozens of businesses let employees off the job for the project.

"When the kids come back on the 29th of August, it's going to look refreshed, which always makes you feed good," Caldwell said.

School Board member Rick Wood stood in the middle of the large crowd milling around before the kickoff.

"It's wonderful to see a sponsor like Pardee come together with the United Way to support our schools," he said. "Great turnout. This is wonderful."