Good neighbors: Pair known for neighborhood parties

Good neighbors know to keep an eye on each other, shovel each other’s walkways and help with any household projects that need to be done.

But some good neighbors know how to throw great parties.

John and Kathleen Olney have lived in their South Hill neighborhood for more than 26 years.

Not only do they keep busy with their day-to-day lives – John works in sales and Kathleen teaches preschool at All Saints while they raise their seven children – but they have turned their neighborhood into a place that is more like the neighborhoods of their youth.

They started a tradition of throwing outrageous neighborhood parties to get people together for a good time.

Every year at Easter, they organize a neighborhood egg hunt. All of the neighbors in the area help fill over 700 plastic eggs to be hidden on Easter Sunday.

They used to hide them the night before, but they ran into problems.

The local squirrels started to get into them. Now, neighbors wake up very early to hide the eggs for the children.

“We’re blessed,” John Olney said. “We’ve got a lot of great neighbors.”

Many of the Olney’s neighbors appreciate the couple’s community efforts.

When a call went out from The Spokesman-Review looking for good neighbors on the South Hill, two of their neighbors recommended the Olneys.

The couple credits their neighborhood involvement to their own childhoods growing up in the 1960s, when people knew their neighbors and were friends. They wanted to share that experience with their seven children, ages 10 to 25.

So, the two began to organize neighborhood parties.

Every year on the Fourth of July, Kathleen gets a permit to shut down their street to cars. They work to get the neighbors’ permission and that everyone agrees to the permit.

“I wouldn’t want to block a street off and not have a permit,” Kathleen said. “Everyone is always very good about it.”

There is a parade that includes children who have decorated their bikes, wagons or dogs, people in golf carts, a kazoo band and a grand marshal. Marshals in years past have included a neighbor’s cocker spaniel named Cliff and a 95-year-old neighbor.

John Olney says the parade typically lasts around three or four minutes, but everyone enjoys the tradition.

“We’re still looking for a sword swallower,” John Olney joked.

At the end of July, the Olneys organize a neighborhood block party.

Neighbors line up their barbecues to cook meat that each neighbor has brought for their own family. The neighbors are also in charge of their own drinks, but there is a potluck of salads and desserts.

Some neighbors open their pools for the kids, the Olneys rent a bounce house, and the adults have time to chat and catch up with each other.

“Kathy and John are central in knitting the community together,” Richard Steele, a neighbor, said about the couple in an e-mail to the paper.

Over the years, neighbors have moved away, but as a testament to the success of the community parties, they come back to join in the festivities.

Kathleen and John say that it is very easy being good neighbors when they like everyone they live around.

“It’s difficult to have the neighbors we have and not be good neighbors,” John said. “It’s only natural.”

The two said that everyone looks out for each other in their neighborhood. On the first snow each winter, someone always clears the walkways, usually long before anyone else has woken up.

They said that all of their seven children grew up in the house and the older children all come back for the parties.

“(They have) managed to keep the concept of ‘neighborhood’ alive and well on our street,” said another neighbor, Jan Karel in her e-mail to the paper. “Often, people are simply too busy to care what is going on in the neighborhood or put together functions that our children will always remember long after they have left our wonderful neighborhood.”

The Olneys may throw the parties, but they do it because they like the people who live around them.

“This is a great neighborhood,” Kathleen said.