Dave Jackson didn’t have time to clean up his heavily wooded yard after an ice storm left it in disarray in December 2008 – he had to answer a call to serve his country in Iraq instead.
Jackson, 35, a sergeant first class in the 211th Military Police in the Army National Guard, was deployed several months after the storm left downed trees and debris all over his property.
A group of local residents – partnering with a national outreach program that provides lawn care for deployed troops – stepped up recently on a volunteer mission to clean up the property. Jackson, who had lived in Townsend for less than two years before he was deployed, said he never expected strangers to reach out and help him.
“It’s tremendous. I was going through so much,” Jackson said. “All these people who didn’t even know me decided to give their all. They have such big hearts. I can never ever thank them enough.” The local volunteers worked with GreenCare for Troops, a national organization dedicated to helping the nation’s servicemen. The program, coordinated by Project EverGreen, connects local green-industry professionals with men and women serving in the armed forces away from home. To clean up his yard right after the storm, Jackson initially hired a contractor, who ended up taking his money but made no dent in the debris.
Jackson, who has served in the National Guard for 17 years, was deployed to Fort Taji in Iraq in July 2009. But in the meantime, he lost his full-time job with the National Guard as an operations sergeant and was separated from his wife.
A friend from the National Guard, Amy Barry of Lynn, knew of the problems at Jackson’s property and nominated him for GreenCare services.
Local residents and Vietnam veterans Tim Manigan and Doug Fitzgerald – who have worked together on veterans’ projects over the years – went before selectmen to enlist help after volunteers from GreenCare came to Townsend and realized they didn’t have the equipment necessary to handle the overgrown grass and remove large downed trees.
That’s when Townsend Highway Department employee Keith Letourneau and his wife, Mary, the town’s animal-control officer, stepped up to help.
“There were a lot of people interested in helping, but it became such a big undertaking that Keith and Mary first came up and started doing it,” Manigan said. “They had the equipment and they, along with their son Shane, did the whole thing.”
After working one day a weekend “over a span of seven weekends of hard work, the lawn was cleared,” Manigan said.
Manigan and Fitzgerald said they first became involved because many Vietnam veterans felt that nothing was being done for them once they were home.
Fitzgerald, a West Point graduate and a captain in the Army, and Manigan, also an Army veteran, say it’s important to give back to other veterans.
Mary Letourneau said she saw the selectmen’s meeting where Manigan and Fitzgerald spoke about Jackson and knew she and her family had to help.
“I said we really need to check into it. We needed to help,” said Letourneau. “His family’s not here, he’s all by himself. He’s going through some stuff and he needed some help, so we just saw what we needed to do and did it.”