Tri-C community cleans up for summer

By TONY BROWN Staff writer
Members of the Jefferson C-123 High School FFA chapter weed a community flower garden in Conception Junction on Saturday during the Tri-C area’s Cleanup and Landscaping Day.

By any measure, Nodaway County’s so-called Tri-C area is a tiny place — just three little towns less than five minutes apart by car with a total population, counting the surrounding farmsteads, of maybe 500 people.

But though their numbers are small, the pride residents of Conception, Conception Junction and Clyde take in their shared community is prodigious.

Yards are trimmed, houses are painted, flowerbeds are blossoming, litter is picked up.

And so it was, even on a cold, rainy Saturday morning when one would expect such things to be postponed, Tri-C was busy getting itself spruced up for summer.

Trucks and trailers pulled up in the lazy drizzle to a pair of dumpsters — one at the Conception Junction American Legion hall and the other at the Teen Beat youth center in Conception — during the annual Tri-C Cleanup and Landscaping Day.

Organizer Jane Walter said the yearly spring-cleaning event is put together by the Community Action Renewal Team — CART — which is part of Tri-C Partners or Progress, a group of local residents who have decided to take a stand against the decline and blight afflicting so many rural communities across the Midwest.

“We want a vibrant community,” said Walter, now retired after an education career than included a stint as elementary principal for the Jefferson C-123 School District.

Saturday’s cleanup day, she said, was just one of several efforts intended to improve the quality of life for both Tri-C’s current residents and, perhaps most importantly, it’s future citizens.

“We want this to be a place for young people to stay and raise their families,” Walter said.

While providing a couple of dumpsters where people can drop off castoff furniture and other bits of junk may not seem like the economic development fast track, Walter believes that every little bit helps.

A lot of her Tri-C neighbors appear to agree with her.

For one thing, unlike most townwide cleanup efforts, this one included a collection jar. That’s right — not only were people scouring their yards, garages and basements, they were so pleased with the prospect that they paid for the privilege. Even early in the day, the jar wasn’t close to empty.

So what makes Tri-C special? Walter said a lot of it has to do with the happenstance of having two major religious institutions within a couple of miles of each other.

Conception is the home of Conception Abbey and Conception Seminary College, a Benedictine institution dedicated to monastic life and the education of young men considering entry into the Roman Catholic Priesthood. Just down the road in Clyde is the Benedictine monastery of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.

Catholicism is a deep, unifying thread that runs throughout eastern Nodaway County. Monks, nuns and seminary students are part of the social fabric, and not a few yards and porches are decorated with small statues of the Virgin Mary and various saints.

Faith is an almost palpable force here.

Another bond is Jefferson School. If many area residents have trusted their souls to the Catholic church, their hearts belong to the Eagles, the Jefferson mascot.

“We have a really good school,” Walter says matter of factly.

Taken altogether, Saturday was a big day in Tri-C. While Walter and Robert Fannon were manning the dumpster at the Legion hall, Jackie Carlson and a group of Jefferson FFA students were pulling weeds in a public flower garden a couple of hundred yards away. The group later moved on to a similar garden in Conception.

As one might expect in corn-and-soybeans country, FFA is a big deal at Jefferson, where the chapter has around 45 members — virtually every high school student in the district.

On Saturday, school was out and classes over for the summer. But in Tri-C you don’t stop pitching in to help your community just because it’s vacation time.

During the cleanup day, other young people were helping out at the Teen Beat youth center in Conception, a former schoolhouse within walking distance of the abbey.

Sandy Wilmes, an adult Teen Beat volunteer, said people bring in donations over the course of the year, clothes and furniture, and that the time had come to clear away boxes of stuff that needed to be thrown away or recycled.

Comfortably grungy with an assortment of old sofas and pool and foosball tables, Teen Beat is open one Friday a month, mostly during the school year when there are no high school athletics events or the game is at home.

Wilmes said between 20 and 25 junior high and high school kids show up whenever the place is open, a healthy percentage of the student body.

The center is run by the Tri-C Community Coalition, which focuses on the needs of young people and, in addition to Teen Beat, administers a mentoring program for at-risk youth.

It’s the sort of thing you would expect in a community like this, where cleaning up and taking care of your neighbor is simply the right thing to do. Even on rainy Saturday mornings.

Eagle pride.