ShawneeDispatch.com

To the Editor:

The Shawnee Downtown Partnership thanks the volunteers and donors who helped make the "Beauty and the Best" event on May 1 a great success.

What looked like a certain rainout at 6 a.m. turned out to be a lovely spring day for Shawnee's second annual "Beauty and the Best" downtown beautification event.

Two hundred volunteers spent the morning hours cleaning, weeding and painting. They filled more than 300 trash bags with debris and three dump trucks with brush. At around noon, everyone gathered up their work tools and headed back to the city hall parking lot for a barbecue lunch. Live music by the group "Celebration" entertained the volunteers while they enjoyed their lunches and vied for door prizes.

The trophy for "Volunteer of the Year" went to Shawnee United Methodist Church with more than 50 volunteers. Full Faith Church of Love came in a close second.

Special thanks go out to the following:

Volunteer Groups: Full Faith Church of Love; Greater Kansas City Chinese Christian Church; Johnson County Church of Christ; Shawnee Church of the Nazarene; Shawnee United Methodist Church.

Donors: Bonnie George, nursing services; Brotherhood Bank, money for food; Commerce Bank, money for food, tickets for door prizes; First National Bank of Olathe: money for food, savings bond; First State Bank of Kansas City Kansas: money for food; New Wave Productions: cost of T-shirts for volunteers.

Door Prizes: A Rose for You; Black Dog Coffee; Burdolski's Automotive; Governor's Meeting House; Martin Family Dentistry; Miss Molly's; Nancy's Nitch; O'Reilly Auto Parts; Old Shawnee Pizza; Pet Stop; Russell Florist; Walgreen's; Yarbrough's.

Laura Filla

Marketing & PR Chairperson,

Shawnee Downtown Partnership