T-R PHOTOS BY SUSANNA MEYER — One camper with the Catholic Heart Work Camp worked on painting the gazebo in Darwin L. Judge Park on Tuesday morning.

Some hard working visitors with the Catholic Heart Work Camp spent quality time in Marshalltown last week, and numerous teams of teens and young adults dispersed throughout the community to make a difference.

CHWC Camp Managers CJ Scales and Bethany Jablonski, both Marshalltown residents, have been chaperoning campers for the Tennessee based program for five years, and in all that time working in other places, neither of them could think of a better spot for a camp than their very own city.

Catholic Heart is dedicated to performing service projects for communities throughout the nation, and with all of the struggles Marshalltown has faced in the last few years, Scales and Jablonski wanted to see if they could bring CHWC to Marshalltown.

They approached Steve Walker, the founder and current owner, about possibly organizing a camp in Marshalltown, and he gave them the go-ahead almost immediately. Roughly a year later, the campers arrived in Marshalltown, and projects at Grimes Farm, the Iowa Veterans Home, the YMCA-YWCA and several other organizations and residences were tackled head-on between Tuesday and Friday.

Jablonski said they were especially excited to introduce the campers to the veterans in Marshalltown and through Veterans Affairs Director Kevin Huseboe, they were able to gather veteran related projects, specifically at Darwin L. Judge Park and IVH.

Before getting to work on several projects in Darwin L. Judge Park, this team of campers and chaperones with Catholic Heart Work Camp prepare their tools and their game plan.

“We’re lucky to have the veteran’s home and the whole veterans community here in Marshalltown, and so, we were really wanting to make sure we got a group out (to Darwin Judge Park) working on this. It’s a beautiful park, a beautiful facility that a lot of people use,” Jablonski said.

A team of campers visited the park on Tuesday, repainted the gazebo and stained park benches and picnic tables. Multiple teams visited IVH throughout the week to weed and clean up the outdoor patios. Other teams spent time with their residents inside, playing games, doing arts and crafts and generally bonding with the community’s veterans.

Huseboe also invited several veterans out to Darwin L. Judge Park on Tuesday to talk with the campers, so that they could gain an understanding of who they were helping and why it was important to the community.

Darwin Judge’s sister, Lori DeSaulnier, also paid them a visit so she could see the restoration of the park named for her brother. Judge was one of the last American Marines to die in the Vietnam War during the evacuations of Saigon at the Tan Son Nhut Airport.

Huseboe felt it was important to get veterans out to talk to the campers so that they could instill a sense of pride in the teens and young adults for what they were doing.

Camp Managers Bethany Jablonski and CJ Scales with Catholic Heart Work Camp stand with Marshalltown Veterans Affairs Director Kevin Huseboe beside the Darwin L. Judge Park sign. Multiple projects in the Park were completed on Tuesday as the CHWC worked its way through Marshalltown.

“When they go back home to their families, they can go ‘Mom, dad, aunts, uncles, look what we’ve done,'” Huseboe said.

In addition, they did numerous other projects throughout the area. They installed handicap ramps, painted houses, built a retaining wall for one resident and even rebuilt the deck at the YMCA-YWCA cultural center.

Scales said 27 teams of campers were working throughout the week, and by the end of the day Friday, they had completed 35 different projects. Scales and Jablonski were not only blown away by all the effort put in by the campers themselves, but the support of the community also left them speechless.

“Some of our agencies, for the first time we’ve had this camp here, had some amazing projects. We had, at Glenwood, some of the kids painted this mural on the wall, and out at Grimes Farm, there were kids that strung about a million fishing poles and got to actually go fishing with some kids. They weren’t just pulling weeds all week,” Jablonski said. “There were some really fun ways to give back to our community that our agencies came up with.”

Scales said the week had been “absolutely amazing,” and that the campers had reacted to each project with “pure excitement.”

A before shot of a table in Darwin L. Judge Park. A team of campers from Catholic Heart Work Camp came in to restore some of the furniture in the park on Tuesday, this table included.

Miller Middle School served as a home away from home for the campers, chaperones and staff of CHWC last week, and after a week of hard work and service, Jablonski, Scales and company invited the people they helped throughout the week to Residents Night at Miller on Friday evening.

During Residents Night, community members got the chance to thank the teams that helped out around Marshalltown and they also were able to view a slideshow of pictures from the various projects CHWC completed.

Though the campers have now headed home, Jablonski and Scales are hoping to return next year and continue working in the community. The duo have put in a lot of hours in the last week as camp managers, but they said the entire experience was nothing but rewarding.

“It’s been exhausting, but it’s been worth every second of it. Worth every bit of work that we put into it,” Jablonski said.

——

A team of campers with the Catholic Heart Work Camp painted this table in Darwin L. Judge Park.

Contact Susanna Meyer at 641-753-6611 or smeyer@timesrepublican.com

Marshalltown Veterans Affairs Director Kevin Huseboe spoke at the Catholic Heart Work Camp Residents Night on Friday, and he thanked the campers for the hard work they put into Darwin L. Judge Park and the Iowa Veterans Home.

A before shot of the gazebo in Darwin L. Judge Park. By the time the Catholic Heart Work Camp was done, this gazebo was repainted and the floors were re-stained.

An after shot of the gazebo in Darwin L. Judge Park. The campers with Catholic Heart Work Camp painted the railing and re-stained the floor.