Do something for the good and future of Monticello

To the Editor,

     Monticello has always been a vibrant community. We have much to be proud of, and our past progress shows us to be a place that can handle itself quite well being half way between two metropolitan cities. Unfortunately it takes more than a track record of past performance to insure we can stay in this position.

     One of the things I have noticed since I returned to my old hometown is the decline in organizations that pump life into this community; those whose efforts at doing all the things we take for granted. Some didn’t even have a real name everybody knew; they just seemed to get the job done every year or season because it needed doing.

     Very recently, the Jaycees ended their association with Monticello; and maybe you noticed the membership of the veterans organizations depend on fewer and fewer people to try and get done what they do. The garden clubs who maintain two of the entrances into our community have lost a significant number of volunteers and one has dropped its membership to their parent organization since they have so few who participate anymore. The Questers organization that used to have a limit to how many members they would take at 25 hasn’t seen the need for a waiting list for some years now. The Burns Lodge No. 173? The Eastern Star? DeMolay? Rainbow Girls? Membership has fallen off to the point they have combined with other towns to stay viable or disbanded, but no longer maintain a presence here. the long time annual event known as the Alumni Banquet has ended for lack of participation by the youngest graduates among us to carry it forward, a terrible loss to those who would return to their home community on those occasions to meet and greet their friends and classmates of years past. Even the newest organization in town, the Eagles Club, finds it hard to maintain hours because of less participation by their members and the community; likewise the amount of donations that go to those in need falls off.

     I hear the praises of those who don’t have the time to participate, but just when did it become the job of so few to carry the load for everybody else? So people really think the people who carry out these functions have nothing better to do with their lives? We all have responsibilities to our families and children; we all have taxes to pay and food to put on the table. Yet volunteers carry the load, which makes Monticello something other than a collection of houses holding people who don’t know each other and don’t care. That volunteer spirit isn’t an activity that gets filled by a one-day commitment to rake a lawn or pick up trash, but this has become the only thing I see any more that constitutes “volunteering.”

     Those who are in those trenches trying to single-handedly carry an organization forward day in and day out with fewer and fewer to help are the star performers. Come on! Get out of that easy chair and do something long term for the good of the community and help turn this around before it is too late! If you can’t find a place or don’t think you have anything to offer, you aren’t trying very hard! Certainly no one is too busy they can’t spare a little time to do something for the community other than complain. Help out some of our over-worked and over-committed folks who try to keep up, while those who don’t commit to do anything wonder how come the community is falling apart.

Steve Hanken

Monticello, Iowa