By DEBORAH GERTZ HUSAR
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
WARSAW, Ill. -- Tiffany Murphy walks from one end of Warsaw's Main Street business district to the other, pointing out success stories along the way.
Downtown buildings sport a fresh coat of paint, in some cases, and patriotic bunting just in time for the community's upcoming bicentennial celebration, slated for June 29-July 1 -- all thanks to volunteers willing to lend a hand.
"It just makes the town look nicer," said Chris Vass, one of the volunteers who turned out on a recent work night. "Everybody has a few skills."
Vass sprayed a coat of olive green paint over the pink and yellow exterior of a building on the east edge of downtown, working with a lift on loan for the night.
"We've got scaffolding around the corner that we can roll over here, but it's a lot easier with the lift," Vass said.
"It's all in the tools," Murphy said. "Last year it was all paintbrushes. It took us three months to do eight buildings."
Not far away, Karla and Ron Froman worked their way along Main Street, repositioning a ladder to hang bunting.
"I've done some painting, some scraping, planted some flowers," Karla Froman said. "We want to get the streets cleaned up, the buildings decorated and get ready for our bicentennial. It's real important to show community pride."
Other volunteers tend flowers planted alongside the street.
"We asked them this year with the bicentennial to do maybe a red, white and blue theme or our town flower," Froman said. "The town flower is the yellow mum."
The Warsaw Community Coalition, formed in 2010, spearheads the beautification effort.
"We've been doing things to try and instill a sense of pride in our community, help better our community and make it a more desirable place to live," said Joe Clarke, a coalition member who chairs the bicentennial committee. "The Main Street beautification program is ongoing. We got a lot done last summer, scraping and painting old buildings with approval of the owners."
Building owners buy the paint to match the Victorian era color palette, primarily greens and browns, voted on by the coalition, Murphy said, and volunteers like Annie Longenecker do the work.
"I can and I should. I'm able. (Tiffany) does a lot, and it inspires me," Longenecker said, while preparing the "pink" building for a fresh coat of paint.
"Everything that's taken place so far is drawing the young people back to town. We have a lot of really active young people. The next generation is very interested and involved," Longenecker said. "They've gone away and want to go back to Mayberry. These educated children are coming back here and making really good lives for themselves and starting families."
Warsaw native Sandra Bavery, adding dark brown paint to highlight details of a building on the west end of Main, likes seeing people get involved in the beautification effort.
"When you live here, you don't notice when things are getting old or how bad our town needed a facelift," she said.
The coalition wants to see the effort continue well beyond the bicentennial and the seventh annual Riverfest slated for Aug. 4.
"We want to showcase what people have going on," Clarke said. "Small towns get a bad rap sometimes, but if you get people out there working, it really gets the ball rolling, the momentum going."
New businesses opening up and people willing to pitch in all can paint a brighter future for Warsaw.
There's more work to be done, but Warsaw is "slowly but surely looking better and better," Molly Hurley, another volunteer, said.
"The more we put effort into the buildings motivates everybody else to spruce up around their house. It catches like wildfire, and everyone gets a little lift in spirit and wants to do better," she said. "A lot of younger kids are going to raise their families here. They want it to be a great place for their children to grow up, to be beautiful like all the other towns you see. It's getting there."
-- dhusar@whig.com/221-3379
Tiffany Murphy and Sandra Bavery discuss the colors to be used to paint the store front on Main Street in Warsaw. (H-W Photo/Michael Kipley)
The Main Street Cafe in downtown Warsaw. (H-W Photo/Michael Kipley)
Sue and Curly Koehler, front, spruce up a tree planter as Karla and Ron Froman prepare to hang a flag banner for the upcoming bicentennial celebration. (H-W Photo/Michael Kipley)
