All Kendra Jones wanted was a dry backyard.
Now she has a place for her four children to play as well as landscaping to be proud of, thanks to a swarm of volunteers that moved in Saturday during the LeBron James Family Foundation’s Promise Project landscaping blitz.
Jones’ daughter Kennedy, 11, was one of 10 sixth-graders chosen for landscaping makeovers, which were carried out Friday and Saturday across Akron. Another student was chosen for a total renovation of her family’s house and yard, a project that starts Sunday and is being led by Nicole Curtis of TV’s Rehab Addict.
Jones and Kennedy watched from the front steps of their Roslyn Avenue house as volunteers from Akron Public Schools fed branches into a wood chipper — branches that until that morning had choked their backyard so completely they didn’t even know how deep the property was.
“It was like finding a hidden treasure,” Jones said. “I was like, ‘All of this is my backyard?’ ”
Her older son, Silece, 13, busied himself hauling logs, grinding branches and raking mulch. Younger son O’Sirus, 9, was assigned to assist David James, who is superintendent of Akron schools when he’s not landscaping yards. Even Jones’ youngest child, 5-year-old Ke’Onnis, had a job to do: cheerfully distribute bottles of water.
Work came to a halt, though, when foundation volunteers pulled up in a cobalt blue, 1975 Chevrolet Impala SS convertible to serenade the workers and family with a reworded version of Summer Nights from the musical Grease.
“Without you, without you we wouldn’t get very far,” they sang in their best greasers-and-Pink-Ladies imitation. “Thanks to you, thanks to you we can reward our all-stars.”
The foundation developed the Promise Project as an incentive for members of the 2021 class of James’ Wheels for Education mentoring program, who are graduating to its Akron I Promise Network. Beneficiaries of the renovations were chosen at random from all the participants in that class who had met specific criteria in areas including academics, school attendance and extracurricular activities.
Local companies, institutions and organizations donated labor and materials to the project.
About a mile away from the Joneses’ house, La’Zurae Gary was stationed at her front window, watching the transformation of her family’s yard on Orrin Street.
“My daughter has not been able to come away from the window,” her mother, Victoria Young, said. Volunteers from the community service organization Torchbearers had refused to let them help, because they wanted the family just to enjoy the gift. But La’Zurae didn’t want to miss a thing.
The volunteers took down trees, cleared overgrown vegetation and planted boxwoods and black-eyed Susans, creating the pretty yard La’Zurae had hoped for. Working alongside them was next-door neighbor, Cynthia Davis, who popped out of her house to help when she saw the crew show up.
“That’s what we do,” she said. “We take care of each other.”
The families of eight other Wheels for Education participants that also received landscape makeovers during the blitz are: twins Melinda and Jade Moore, Autumn Claxton, Billy Jammel Glass II, Bryce Owens, Dar Shawn Logan, Treasure Ann Livingston and Tylan Person.
On Sunday, the focus of the Promise Project shifts to Rhodes Avenue in West Akron, where work begins on the home of 11-year-old Mariah Riley and her family. The renovation is being videotaped for an episode of Rehab Addict that will air on HGTV in the fall.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.