Dear Neighbor:                                                                       November 2021

 

   Hi, I’m Nono Fisher, the new President of TPCL I’ve been involved with the League for 20+ years. When our family moved to our home near The Plains 22 years ago, we were a young family with a toddler and a first grader. One of our first neighborhood discoveries was the community Christmas party hosted by The Plains Community League which, along with the Easter egg hunt in the Spring, soon became a yearly “can’t miss” event for our family, even as our kids grew. A recent treasured memory was made when our former toddler son, now 23, took our new beagle puppy for a visit with Santa and a photo.  This Christmas we are looking forward to starting a new family holiday tradition by attending the League’s first annual Holiday movie, a drive-in event at Great Meadow that is free to all.

 

   Over the years, our family grew to add a little sister for our two boys, and our involvement with The Plains Community League grew as well. When my children were still small my husband would watch the kids while I attended monthly Community League meetings in the evening and volunteered on Saturdays at the lending library housed in the heart of our organization, The John Page Turner House on Main Street. As the boys got older, they always felt at home at the Turner house and started getting involved in helping as well. When our oldest son had to choose a community service Eagle Scout project, he built the three green picnic tables in the front yard of the Turner house in 2012. He also helped with the annual A Day in The Plains, a fall festival which we had to discontinue due to a lack of volunteers and I would like to revive. All three kids have made many Scarecrows over the years for the annual Scarecrow contest, another tradition we are hoping to return to the streets of town. Today our oldest son says that his involvement with The Plains Community League from an early age made him feel like a valued member of a caring community and instilled in him values he uses today as the Senior Director of Government Affairs for a national organization.

 

   Our middle child also became involved with the Community League in elementary school when he struggled with some of his schoolwork. Enter The Plains Community League and Mrs. Kuhns, who ran the free tutoring program for local students and who became a special source of inspiration for my son as well as many other students. In high school, he became a tutor himself in the same program that helped him so much and today is a student at the University of Virginia. In a recent Community League newsletter article, he credited his academic success in large part to the tutoring he received as a young student from The Plains Community League.

 

   Our daughter has also grown up with the Plains Community League and has fond memories of working with her brothers and friends to fill boxes of food for The League’s annual Thanksgiving Basket project, which provides Thanksgiving meals and a week’s worth of groceries to local families in need. My husband and I, along with other volunteers spend every Sunday before Thanksgiving helping with this project by picking up the groceries in our two largest vehicles and delivering them to the Turner house. Recently, the League expanded this outreach project to include a spring basket project called the May Day Basket project. Our daughter is now a freshman at William and Mary and one of 11 grateful recipients of scholarships awarded annually by the TPCL.

 

   Our Scholarship program is another of the important programs we offer to the community. Any student or adult who plans to attend college, trade school or a certificate program and lives in the 20198-zip code can apply for this annual/renewable scholarship. Very fittingly, our daughter elected to have her recent high school graduation party at the newly renovated Turner House, which is available for rent by the hour for business and social events. Local homeschooling groups as well as Piedmont Regional Adult & Career Education Programs, which will begin to offer GED training and testing this fall, use the Turner House for their programs.

 

  As you can see just from my family’s story, The Plains Community League offers so many valuable services and programs to the community. About 50% of the costs of these are covered by volunteer services, in-kind donations, and grants. What remains must be made through donations from the community. Will you help us cover these expenses with a donation today? We thank you in advance for lending a helping hand and helping to make The Plains the best little town in America!

 

Sincerely,

 

Nono M. Fisher

 

Nono M. Fisher, President