Everyone knows Local 19 will always rally around a worthy cause, whether it be for a brother or sister in need of a helping hand or a community with a project that falls into the Local’s wheelhouse.
You’re also probably well aware of the camaraderie that exists between Local 19 and other trade unions that share the same philosophy and are proud of the results when your Local joins another union in some charitable endeavor. It leaves every member with a good feeling.
So, it should come as no surprise that when Ken Hayes, Vice Chairman of the Warminster Board of Supervisors, reached out for help to Local 19 Business Agent Jim Keenan, we were all in. Hayes, who retired from IUPAT District Council 21 in 2002, approached Keenan about some basketball backboards that had been vandalized at the township’s community park.
“(Parks and Recreation Director) Jessica Fox called me last year, sometime in the summer, and mentioned that some of the backboards had been vandalized,” Hayes explained. “So, I called Jimmy Keenan, and Jessica and I met him over at the Community Park.”
What they found were five backboards lying on the ground damaged beyond repair. The fiberglass backboards were part of the Bankshot Basketball Court, which is described on the Friends of Warminster Parks webpage as a place where players weave their way through “a course of angled, curved, and non-conventionally configured brightly colored backboards, banking shots off the Bankboards™ and through the rims”. Players play alongside one another, not against each other, and it is designed for participants of all ages and abilities including those with disabilities.
“Ken called me up and told me we have five backboards that are damaged,” Keenan said. “They were originally made of fiberglass but were damaged from kids hanging on the rims. He asked me if there was anything I could do. I went up and looked at them and said, ‘Absolutely we could do something.’ I took the damaged backboards down to our training center.”
The apprentices at the training center fabricated replacement backboards using the old ones as a template, constructing them in metal to replace the fiberglass. Hayes, meanwhile, had already talked to his friends at DC 21 about jumping in after Local 19 had made the new backboards, and they were transported up to northeast Philadelphia to be painted.
The new backboards were installed in September with a short ceremony where the township acknowledged the work of the two unions working together.
There you have it. Another example of how Local 19 is always willing to lend a helping hand.
