front&center Charlotte Nabholz

Striving to make a difference by cleaning up Faulkner County

By Carol Rolf

LITTLE ROCK — One person can make a difference.

Consider the story of Charlotte Nabholz.

Born in Fayetteville, a daughter of the late Wayne and Alma Cate, she graduated from Fayetteville High School and attended Arkansas Baptist Hospital School of Nursing in Little Rock, graduating as a registered nurse.

She remained in Little Rock, trying to make a difference in other people's lives as she worked as a surgical nurse for a general surgeon.

She married Charles "Charlie" Nabholz in 1964 and moved to his hometown of Conway. Nabholz is now president and chairman of the board of Nabholz Properties Inc.

"We were married in 1964 and in April 1965, the tornado hit Conway," she said. "In the aftermath of that tornado, I volunteered for the Red Cross, trying to help those who were injured or had lost their homes." She also helped with blood drives during that time and continued doing so over the years, still trying to make a difference in others' lives.

"I was 24 and Charlie, 28, when we married," Nabholz said. "We were ready to settle down and start a family." That family consists of one son and three daughters.

Son Greg Nabholz lives in Little Rock and is vice president of Nabholz Properties. Daughter Gwen and her husband, Steve Azar, live in Nashville, Tenn., and have three children - Strack, 13, Adrian, 11, and Cecilia, 7.

Daughter Sarah and her husband, Jeff Mitchell, live in

Fayetteville and have two children - Ryan Elizabeth,

17, and Randal, 11. Daughter Camilla and her husband,

Lance Williamson, also live in Fayetteville and have two

children - Caden, 6, and Brooklyn, 2 1/2.

"I never went back to work after the children were

born," she said, noting with a smile, "I had four children

in five years. But I still consider myself a nurse.

"Being a nurse helped me with my family," she said.

"I still get calls from friends and family asking me for help or advice." In 1996, Nabholz did go back to work for a short time, working in the Little Rock advertising office of the late political cartoonist, George Fisher.

It was during that time she became increasingly concerned about litter she saw strewn along Interstate 40 as she drove back and forth from Conway to Little Rock. She took it upon herself to try to address the litter problem, seeking once again to make a difference in the lives of others.

"I just got so concerned about the litter on the highways," she said. "I thought, 'Surely people realize litter hurts us all.' Since tourism is the No. 2 industry in Arkansas, it hurts us economically, if nothing else.

"I remembered back in the 1950s and '60s, there was a major campaign against litter," she said, recalling the slogan, "Don't Be a Litter Bug." "It was a very successful campaign, but I knew nothing had been done about litter in a long time. I thought, 'Surely the state plans another campaign to do something about litter.'" But after investigation, Nabholz found there were no plans on the drawing board to launch another antilitter campaign, so she took it upon herself to see what could be done.

"I called the Keep Arkansas Beautiful Commission,but found it was just a one-person commission with only volunteer workers and there was nothing planned," she said. "I thought, 'Well, maybe if I could organize a group of volunteers to address the issue, we could become a model, a prototype, for other cities in the state.'"

Nabholz did just that. She enlisted the help of three other women in the community - Sue Alread, Diane Russell and Sylvia Meriwether. The four of them formed the Clean Up Faulkner County Committee. "We held a town meeting in February 1997, and had 50 or so people showed up at the Faulkner County Library, all ready to go to work."

In March 1997, the committee coordinated a spring Cleanup in Faulkner County and initiated a process to identify illegal dumpsites in the county.

"Twenty-five sites were located, defined and reported to the state by the end of May 1997, in an effort to qualify for funds that were available for cleanup efforts," Nabholz states in a report on "The History of Keep Faulkner County Beautiful Committee."

"Our mission was litter prevention, beautification and good waste management," Nabholz said.

In addition to cleaning up the county, Nabholz said the committee wanted to develop a curriculum on litter prevention for the local schools. As they began working on that curriculum, Nabholz learned about Keep America Beautiful Inc., which offered what was needed for the committee to accomplish its goals.

"KAB had everything we were looking for," Nabholz said "Their 'Waste in Place' curriculum for schools could be easily incorporated into our schools.

"I attended a KAB workshop on 'Waste in Place' and came back determined to get us (Keep Faulkner County Beautiful Committee) an affiliation with Keep America Beautiful," she said. "I felt, and still feel, it is so important for this to be countywide. We are all in this together. I was determined that our effort would be countywide."

Nabholz's next step was to contact Win Thompson, thenpresident of the University of Central Arkansas, about hosting a three-day Keep America Beautiful workshop on campus. Thompson agreed not only to host the workshops, but also to sponsor bringing in the Keep America Beautiful National Education Leader to conduct the workshops and to provide lunch each day.

After a lengthy application process, on April 27, 1999, Keep Faulkner County Beautiful was officially certified as an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful Inc. in a ceremony on the Faulkner County courthouse lawn. Nabholz said former state Sen. Stanley Russ was "most important in the beginning by getting a $50,000 grant for us from the legislative session of 1999."

Since that time, Nabholz has led Keep Faulkner County Beautiful in accomplishing many tasks.

Its first big project was to clean up the Springfield/Des ArcBridge near Wooster on Nov. 6, 1999. For this effort, which saw 81 volunteers donating a total of 423 hours with a dollar value of those hours at $3,668.10, KFCB received a first-place award from the Keep Arkansas Beautiful Commission.

More recently, Keep Faulkner County Beautiful has aligned itself with the city of Conway Sanitation Department and the Faulkner County Solid Waste Management District, which is under the direction of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and directed locally by Cheryl Harrington, director of the city's sanitation department. Angie Howard, who heads up Conway's recycling efforts at the sanitation department as well as coordinates public education efforts for the waste management district, is now the executive director of Keep Faulkner County Beautiful, a position she's held for the last five years. Nabholz retains the title of KFCB's chairman of the board.

Nabholz said each entity brings a lot to the table as they work toward reducing the litter problem in Faulkner County, "without duplication of services,"she said. KFCB is now a standing committee of the Faulkner County Solid Waste Management District.

"It has worked out beautifully," Nabholz said. "We all work toward the same goal - reduce, reuse, recycle- yet we have the freedom to have our own projects, to do our own things."

KFCB continues with many ongoing projects, such as fall and spring county cleanups, beautification and landscaping at the five county libraries in conjunction with the Master Gardeners, environmental educational programs in schools and booths at different events, teacher training workshops, litter free events and litter index studies countywide each year, among others.

Nabholz said the litter index study is done on a Saturday in March and involves five or six people. "We drive all over the county, go to industries, cities, rural areas, schools, neighbors. We have a way to grade litter that we find, from 'none,' to 'a small amount' to 'a lot.'

"This gives us a barometer of what we have in the county," she said. "It also lets us know the needs of the communities."

Nabholz said, "We have seen improvement. It's just a matter of education. If people would just stop and think before they throw something out the window or into the back of their truck, we would not have such a litter problem. If people would just stop and pick up litter when they see it, instead of thinking 'that's someone else's job,' we would not have as much litter as we do."

Nabholz said litter "already costs the state $5 million annually to keep litter picked up off the highway. That's the people's tax money going to pay for that." She makes available a $5 "litter buck" that shows what else the state could use that $5 million for - putting 44 more teachers in the schools, buying 200,000 new books for libraries, delivering 1 million meals to senior citizens, assuring 2,000 more children access to early care and education, and more.

"Education is the key," she reiterated. "That's why during our annual cleanups we try to focus on young people. If they are educated about this, they are not as likely to litter."

Nabholz has received many accolades over the years for her efforts in spearheading the campaign against litter. "I'm happy to receive these honors related to Keep Faulkner County Beautiful and its work," she said. "I'm glad to accept them because ithelps promote our mission.

"I've always had a wonderful board and members who worked on this with me," Nabholz said. "Nothing would have been done without them. I'm always the first to say that.

"The governments, businesses and industries in the area have been so helpful, so supportive and have given so much to us. It's taken everyone to make it work.

"I've always said if I had any talent at all it would be organizing," Nabholz said. "People say that about me, that I am organized. I guess that's true. I just want to see it get done."

Among her honors are the 2007 naming by the ConwayCity Council of the Charlotte Nabholz Gazebo in the Liberty Garden at Laurel Park; the 2006 Faulkner County Leadership Institute Award; the 2003 "Crystal ARkeeper" state award from the Keep Arkansas Beautiful Commission; the 2002 Conway Area Chamber of Commerce Good Neighbor Award; serving as the 2002 grand marshal of the Faulkner County Fair Parade; the June 2001 United Way Volunteer of the Month award; and the 1999 Counseling Associates Community Service Award.

In addition to her work with Keep Faulkner County Beautiful, Nabholz strives to make a difference in her community in other ways. She is an active member of Chapter E of PEO, Conway Civic League and Friends of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for the 20th Judicial District). She is a life member of Conway Junior Auxiliary, which seeks to help children in the community, and a member and past chairman of the statewide organization The Committee of 100, established to promote interest in, and raise funds for, the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View.

Nabholz is active in St. Joseph Catholic Church as well. "Charlie and I work together in the Couple to Couple program for engaged couples in our church," she said.

Nabholz is now working to make a difference in the lives of children. She's involved in trying to develop interest and support in Faulkner County for Arkansas Children's Hospital. She and her husband are hosting a benefit for the hospital's Children's Circle of Care program this month.

River Valley Ozark, Pages 120, 121, 128 on 11/16/2008