A tribute

Pink sanitation trucks honor late leader

Jean Jasso, from left, and Ross Harrington, mother and husband of the late Cheryl Harrington, who was the Conway sanitation director, and Jack Bell, interim director of the department, stand next to the residential truck that was painted pink to honor Harrington’s memory. She died in March of cancer. Three other pink trucks were ordered and will bear her name. There was no additional cost for the pink paint, Mayor Tab Townsell said. The sanitation complex and street into the area were named after Harrington, too.
Jean Jasso, from left, and Ross Harrington, mother and husband of the late Cheryl Harrington, who was the Conway sanitation director, and Jack Bell, interim director of the department, stand next to the residential truck that was painted pink to honor Harrington’s memory. She died in March of cancer. Three other pink trucks were ordered and will bear her name. There was no additional cost for the pink paint, Mayor Tab Townsell said. The sanitation complex and street into the area were named after Harrington, too.

The late Conway sanitation director Cheryl Harrington likely would have been tickled pink about four new garbage trucks dedicated to her memory.

Harrington died in March after battling cancer, which started with breast cancer in 1999 and returned more than a dozen times in different areas of her body, said her husband, Ross Harrington of Cleveland.

Four pink compressed-natural-gas trucks have “In Memory of Cheryl Harrington” and a ribbon painted on them.

“Ordinarily, most people wouldn’t want their name on a trash truck, but Cheryl was anything but ordinary,” her husband said. “She always said she would have a pink truck because whenever we were doing the walk with the Susan G. Komen [race], we would always stop at the pink firetruck in Little Rock.”

The Conway City Council also approved renaming the sanitation complex after Cheryl Harrington, as well as the street leading into it.

“The real shock was renaming the complex and renaming the street after her,” Ross Harrington said. “All together, you’re speechless. I was in such awe of everything.”

Mayor Tab Townsell said Cheryl Harrington was the consummate department head.

“It’s a way of saying thank you — of remembering her, yes, and as a thank you,” Townsell said. “She did so much to elevate the perception of the sanitation department. Instead of being an undesirable civic necessity, it’s now a source of civic pride. It’s one of the best sanitation departments, top to bottom, in the state, down to the looks of the grounds. She believed in running a top-notch organization, not a town dump.”

When Harrington became sanitation director in 2003, among her first priorities were expanding the recycling program and cleaning up the look of the facility, including planting flowers at the base of the Conway Sanitation Department sign. She also started a reuse center, where items too good to throw away are sold.

Her accomplishments earned her Department Head of the Year awards for 2011 and 2009 for the city of Conway.

Ross Harrington said his wife never complained through all her illnesses and took pride in her work.

“She did all of this — she took that facility, turned it around and made it something great instead of a deficit on the city,” he said, “all the while, while she was carrying her cross of that cancer and praising God the whole time. She was a driving force.”

“I just go, go, go in all things, not just the cancer,” Cheryl Harrington had said in an interview with the River Valley & Ozark Edition.

Townsell said the garbage trucks were scheduled to be ordered anyway, and the idea came up to have them painted pink for Harrington.

“It was a group-think idea, not one person’s,” Townsell said. “We’ve got to pay for the paint job anyway — why not paint them pink?” It was a way to “bring a little notoriety to not only Cheryl but the city of Conway,” he said.

Townsell said having the trucks painted pink didn’t cost more than the standard green.

Rebecca McHughes, administrative assistant for the sanitation department, said the trucks include a residential one, which has arrived and is in use, at a cost of $270,733; a front-loading truck, $140, 919; a rear-loading truck, $168,063; and a roll-off truck designed to pick up canisters of construction materials, $178,684.

Ross Harrington said his wife would have been proud.

“She was the best woman I ever met in my life,” he said.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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