In his city, he’s the king of clean

A late winter sun met a dawn fog the morning of March 8. The fog retreated to the lake, and by 8 o’clock the sun shone warm on the faces that’d formed a circle on the knoll beside the pavilion at Western Hills Park.

It was the annual citywide cleanup put on by Keep Little Rock Beautiful, a volunteer-led effort with a budget of about $5,000 dedicated to beautification and litter prevention. What it can’t prevent, of course, it collects.

Of the 50 or so cleaner-uppers, no one had bent down to pick up more trash in a lifetime than Nash Abrams. For one, Abrams and his wife, Marilyn, have for years cleaned up after a wide swatch of downtown for the Adopt-A-Street program. Where Little Rock encourages volunteers of the program to consider taking on three to seven city blocks for cleanup every other month, the Abramses reign over all the refuse in a 40-block survey from Main Street to Interstate 30 south of Second Street.

“He really gets excited with Adopt A Street and these park cleanups. He loves the city. Born and raised here. It’s his town,” she says.

“I can’t get out of here!” he grouses.

For another, Abrams is 89 years old. He graduated from Little Rock Senior High School in 1941 just in time for the big fight. He enlisted in the Navy and hopped off to the Pacific, where he was a second-class signalman.

“He’s still giving people directions,” Marilyn says.

But to give direction you have to take direction. About 10 years ago Abrams was set to rotate off the City Beautiful Commission. Some folks with the city asked him and others to take the initiative to get the city qualified as a Keep America Beautiful affiliate. Abrams was one of the heartiest volunteers. It took a year’s work, and part of the qualifying process was “a complete litter checkup,” which was right in his wheelhouse.

What’s the difference between City Beautiful and Keep Little Rock Beautiful? “We’re more into action,” says board member and fellow founder Suzanne Smith Hirrel. So, for instance, City Beautiful might have had a hand in developing the roundabout on Rebsamen Park Road between the golf course and the apartments, but Keep Little Rock Beautiful found a corporate partner in Botanica Gardens and landscaped and maintain it.

The other obvious difference is that City Beautiful is an empowered commission, whereas Keep Little Rock Beautiful is a volunteer force with assistance from the city.

Incidentally, another roundabout is slated for the quirky intersection of Pine Valley Road, McKinley Street and Kavanaugh Boulevard in the Heights, and Keep Little Rock Beautiful volunteers are keen on getting their hands dirty there, too.

In his working life, Abrams spent 37 years with Frank Lyon Distributing Co., ultimately rising to executive vice president in charge of sales. He had, he says, “a great group of professional salesmen.” One he hired out of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock was Henry Browne, better known as Hank of Hank’s Fine Furniture.

Abrams retired in 1988. By then he was running marathons and participating in Senior Olympics on the competition and administrative sides. In the mid-1990s he was still competing in the high jump. Partly because of age, partly because he never mastered the Fosbury Flop, he recalls only jumping about 4 ½ feet.

The Abramses live in Quapaw Tower - Nash Abrams for 31 years. He has often used MacArthur Park as his training ground, and in 2001 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette photographer Steve Keesee stopped to get a shot of the 78-year-old dragging a tire behind him as he worked out in the park.

“Thank God he stopped that,” Marilyn says.

In 2006, at the age of 83, Keep Arkansas Beautiful awarded him its ARKeeper Award, given to someone who battles litter and/or promotes recycling and beautification.He got the award in large part because of his Keep Little Rock Beautiful efforts, but also in recognition of helping develop a cash-incentive program that rewards the city’s most litter-free neighborhoods and his partnership with the Little Rock Police Department on TV ads discouraging litter.

In his time walking the streets of downtown, he has picked up items as big as a basketball goal post and automobile flotsam, all the way down to cigarette butts. He actually bothers to pick up cigarette butts. “A cigarette butt, I’m told, will last up to 5 years. That’s something, isn’t it?”

Abrams is fond of saying that if he could just convince 1,000 Little Rockers to sign up for Adopt-A-Street, the city would be picked up, and for your effort “the department of public works puts a sign up that tells people you pick up this neighborhood - it’s a great recognition!”

Here’s another way of accomplishing the same goal: If the next time someone readies to flick a cigarette out the window, or fling his empty bottle behind a bush, if he’d stop and picture an 89-yearold war veteran stooping to pick up after him, maybe the city would pick up after itself.

The Great American Cleanup kicked off March 1 and runs through May. To learn more about efforts in other communities around the state, check out the Keep Arkansas Beautiful website, tinyurl.com/nobs95o.