Recovery effort involves improving parts of city
About 60 people spent their Saturday helping to bridge the gap between people in recovery and the rest of the community.
Saturday was the first event for Action in Recovery, a volunteer community service project in which people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction help clean up and repair parts of the city. Members of First United Methodist Church also took part.
Jason Beckwith of Butler is a person in recovery who organized Action in Recovery. On Saturday, participants picked up trash around the city and painted the swinging bridge behind Kelly Automotive Park.
Beckwith and others at the event said they want to spread the word about the positives of life in recovery. He addressed the volunteers at First United Methodist before they started.
“Everybody here is a human being first,” he said. “We like the same things. We love, we laugh, we cry.”
Adam Christy, who is in recovery, was glad to make a positive difference in town.
“I grew up in this community my entire life,” he said. “I never really cared about it like I (do now),” he said.
Christy's wife, Jamie McKinley-Christy, of Butler, has been in recovery for 13 years and also participated in Saturday's event.
“I just want the community to know that we recover and do get better, even though there's a lot of stigma,” she said.
Patti Wladika, another participant, said that stigma can keep people struggling with the disease of addiction from getting help.
“Secrets keep you sick,” she said.
The volunteers met at First United Methodist Church, and members of the church also were there to help out.
One such member was Sharon Kleemann, who said the city needs to help people in recovery both “medically” and “spiritually.”
The project was coordinated with the help of Butler County Commissioner Leslie Osche, who aided in acquiring supplies for cleaning and painting.Organizations that donated supplies included the Butler AM Rotary Club, First United Methodist and Butler County Parks & Recreation.Osche also rolled up her sleeves to help paint the bridge. She said the project was special to her because she worked on the bridge years before with the United Way.“It's the idea of bringing people in the community together with people in recovery to bring a project that has value to the community, and have fun doing it,” she said.McKinley-Christy hopes to set a good example for people currently struggling with addiction.“I think it could be inspiring, because no matter what we do in recovery we want to emulate positivity,” she said. “That's what our goal is, to attract rather than promote people.”Beckwith hopes to continue the project with another event in August. That's an opportunity for which Adam Christy is grateful.“I just want to show that we're not all dying out here,” he said. “We're being productive.”
