Aberdeen Residents Host Cleanup Day

ABERDEEN, Miss.(WCBI) – The city of Aberdeen is looking a lot cleaner after residents got together for a clean-up day.

The city-wide cleanup effort started in 2016, but this year the groups Men of Vision and Mothers of Vision are organizing it.

They say Aberdeen, like many other towns, has a litter problem.

“You can just look around and see what’s going on. We all need help around. I mean you’ve got trash everywhere we all need to pick up trash. We’re just trying to make it happen around here. I mean there’s a lot that needs to be done. I wish we can bring goals around here for the kids to come out and play more things as far as if the city can come together and help do things for the kids just us. I mean we need to work together,”said Taurus James.

Mayor Maurice Howard joined the effort saying beautification plays a role in economic development.

“Well anything that is attractive and more presentable is going to be more feasible for us to accompany business and to accomplish our efforts and economic development and just for our citizens in general. You know it’s good to beautify your community just to increase the coming of individuals we want to make sure we do everything that we possibly can to make our town look beautiful,”said Aberdeen Mayor Maurice Howard.

Frank and Linda Record grew up in Aberdeen and moved back to town five years ago. They remember when the slogan “Don’t be a Litterbug” permeated the national conscience.

“You don’t litter. You don’t throw your cigarette butts on the ground. Don’t throw your empty beer bottles and cans on the ground. That’s just part of it. It comes from the heart. I just feel you just start cleaning things up and people come in, they’ll see it’s clean, they’ll start looking and say maybe I want to come to Aberdeen and live here. And that’s what we’re trying to do,”said volunteer Frank Record.

“We’ve gotten rid of a lot things that we should be remembering to do, things that we should be raising our children and our grand children up on like “Don’t be a Littebug.” That was really big when our kids were growing up,”said volunteer Linda Record.

After a morning of working hard making Aberdeen look more beautiful everyone gathered on the steps of City Hall as a show of community unity.

The city plans on holding these community cleanups every several months.