On page one today, writer Robert Oliver discusses the many park improvements that have enhanced this community’s already fortunate bounty of public outdoor space.

Yes, Webster City is blessed.

Ironically, when news surfaced of the proposed construction of a retail store where East Twin Park exists, the city manager at the time, Jeff Sheridan, reasoned that with so many plentiful parks locally, the loss of East Twin to a retail building wouldn’t be missed.

As we know now, he couldn’t have been more spectacularly wrong.

Our parks are a strength, a powerful calling card in the vast competition of small towns that would love to lure new people who would help grow their community.

To improve them is work well worth the effort and expense.

But as we know, land isn’t everything. Our wealth as a community may be rooted by an abundance of parks, but our best capital is its volunteers.

Volunteers, by their very nature, are people who see a job that must be done and step forward to do it.

You’ll see a list of them with Oliver’s story today.

Two people missing from that list are John and Marcia Hawkins. While John Hawkins gets a lot of attention as this town’s mayor, I’d like to share what I know Marcia Hawkins has contributed, particularly last summer when the new shelter was put together.

I know this because we took a ride down to the shelter to consult.

You see, back in the day — and I’m talking way back in the day — Marcia and I worked together refinishing antique furniture, something that was popular — OK — way, way back in the day. I think you get my point.

So Marcia shows me this big flaw in one of the load-bearing posts from the kit and, after discussing it, she undertook the effort to repair that flaw using some serious amounts of wood filler and that handy tool: the orbital sander. She did a beautiful job. I challenge anyone to find her work.

That’s volunteerism, folks. She assessed a problem, consulted and then applied her skill set to fix something that, really, was a city issue.

But that’s not all. When both Hawkins’s realized that the bands on the trusses of the kit shelter had stained them in multiple areas, Marcia got on a ladder in last summer’s heat and sanded until you could no longer see the stains.

That perfection you see? Thank Marcia, who is a volunteer.

Remember that stifling humidity last week? Who could forget it, right? The Town & Country Garden Club members would probably like to. There they were, high noon and beyond, planting the planters that line downtown Webster City’s sidewalks.

This summer, when those planters burst into color, remember that on a dang hot and humid day in May, gardeners gathered and planted those pots. (BTW, Marcia was there too.)

Folks, yes our parks make this town fabulous, but they can’t hold a grass blade to the people who pitched in.

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal.