400 arrive in Youngstown to repair homes for elderly, disabled

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — A group from Monticello, Ind., bound for Youngstown didn’t let little things like thunderstorms and hail deter it from its mission.

The 10 high schoolers and three adults made the eight-hour drive Saturday enroute to the Mill Creek Group Workcamp going on all this week in the city.

They and about 400 others from around the country are staying at Chaney High School on South Hazelwood Avenue. Their days will be spent making improvements to homes of between 50 and 70 elderly, disabled and low-income Youngstown residents.

The camp is hosted by Western Reserve United Methodist Church in conjunction with Group Workcamps Foundation, a Colorado-based, nonprofit, faith-based mission which coordinated dozens of similar camps all across the country and abroad each year.

The Monticello group traveled in three vans, keeping in touch with each other by walkie-talkie, said T.J. Lopez, 14, who manned one of the radios, using the handle, “Bean Burrito.”

They encountered hail, and thunderstorms and the weather was so bad at times they had to pull off the road to wait it out, said Betty Passmore, one of the adult supervisors on the tip.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.