Good Neighbors: ‘Right thing to do’

Darla Andrews grew up in a close neighborhood and was delighted when her family moved back close to where she grew up.

“I grew up across the baseball field from West Valley High School,” she said. “My parents still live there. When we moved back here in 1992, we wanted to find a place in Millwood, but we’re just on the other side of Trent from it.”

Darla and her husband, Sam, raised their children – Sammy, Hilary and Maggie – to appreciate the good neighbor lessons Darla learned growing up.

“I’ve always talked to my kids about helping people out,” she said. “It’s just how we brought our kids up. It’s how we were brought up. We just kind of did it by example. My husband has always been the kind of guy where, if a neighbor needs something done, he goes over and does it. And our son, the one who still lives here at home, he does too.”

And their neighbors appreciate it more than they can say.

“They’re just the nicest people ever,” neighbor Jill Barrett said. “They’re always doing nice things.

“I’ll give you an example. In January I volunteered to help out with the figure skating championships. One day that I did that was the day we had six inches of snow. I had to stand outside in the snow all day directing visitors all around town and I kept thinking all day that the last thing I was looking forward to when I got done was shoveling out my driveway. I pulled in late that night and they had already shoveled it for me.”

Helping neighbors is second nature now to the Andrews family.

“You just do it because you try to help out,” Darla said. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s a good life lesson. You take in their trash can so that, if you ever need it, maybe they’ll bring yours in for you.”

It works.

“Almost every week, when it’s trash day, I come home and they’ve already put my trash can and recycle bin away for me,” Barrett said. “They’re just sweet people. I don’t ask them to do that.

“But I did return the favor. One week, not too long ago, I came home, and both of our trash cans were out, and I got to put them both away. It was the least I could do.”

But it’s more than just shoveling driveways and bringing in trash cans with the Andrews family, Barrett said.

Sam offered to put some touch-up paint on the front of her house not long ago. Instead, without a word, he painted the front of the house. When a tree died in her front lawn, Sam and his son showed up with a saw, cut it up and hauled it off. If a neighbor goes away for a few days, they come home to find their lawn watered and mowed and their mail brought in.

During the summer, the Andrews driveway becomes a social hub for the neighborhood, throwing what they like to call “driveway parties.”

“Those are just for a group of us,” Darla Andrews said. “We sit out and we visit and catch up with one another. It lets us keep up with what’s going on with everyone. We enjoy it.”

The neighbors did find a way to express their gratitude over the holidays.

The Andrews recently bought a vacation trailer.

“It’s a lovely trailer with a big tarp,” Barrett said. “Since they have it parked out there for the winter to store it, one of our other neighbors and I decorated it for them for Christmas. We had the redneck trailer decorated for Christmas. We decorated it as tacky as we could make it. We all still laugh about that.

“They now joke that they’re the trailer trash of the neighborhood. But we all know otherwise.”