Benton man uses his free time to clean up the river park for others

MySaline gets emails and messages all the time, but occasionally one sticks out. Pollyanna Brown Wherry emailed a nice letter to us on Monday morning, telling about a man she saw working by the river. There are several people who volunteer their time to make time at the river and Saline Crossing Park more enjoyable, but this is the one Ms. Wherry encountered. She moved to Texas years ago for her husband’s job, but she still has family in Benton where she grew up. Consider this a letter to the editor:

Recently, I came back to Benton to visit family and drove down River Street with my daughter to take a few pictures of and around the Saline. When we got there we walked around for a little while, then went on down to the river to take a look at it. We sat for a bit and found some neat rocks to gather as souvenirs from our little visit there. We had come back up the bank when we encountered a kind gentleman – Mr. Doyle Richey – who was messing with a weed eater on the tailgate of his truck. He politely asked if I were the lady who took photos about different things and posted them in the paper. I assured him I wasn’t that lady and suggested that she might be a reporter from the newspaper or perhaps Shelli Poole from MySaline. He said, “Yeah I believe that’s the one; I just thought you might be her.”

Mr. Ritchey pointed to a big, rutted-out mud hole filled with green scum. He said, “That was courtesy of those melon heads who come down here in their big ole trucks and proceed to make big ole holes where they spin their wheels or whatever they do to cause this.” He talked about how it was very disrespectful to others and made it hard for others to enjoy the river as well as how nasty it was because the holes filled up with this scummy water and trash. I told him I was sorry but I could understand that it could be very annoying because my daughter and I had just seen another one further up the path. He wished me a good day. and I returned the same to him.

Then, my daughter and I went back to the truck. I told her I was planning to drive back up the road to a different spot on the river but ended up turning around and going back because of more large holes. When we got back to where we had previously been, I saw that Mr. Ritchey had started his weed eater and was cutting down the high weeds near the river. I told my daughter I had a lot of respect for him because not many would take the time nor initiative to do that type of work for nothing. I walked back down to where he was and told him that I admired what he was doing and had taken a photo of the scummy hole and would like to take his picture and send it along with the photo of the scummy hole to the local paper to show people how annoying and potentially hazardous such holes were.

Mr. Ritchey told me that he came down to the river to cut the weeds because he liked for people to be able to view the river and for others to be able to easily back their trucks up to put their boats in. He even spoke about getting some dirt to fill in some of the smaller holes that animals had dug. That is what I call devoted.

I told Mr. Ritchey that I appreciated what he was doing and would remember it. I left the river that day seeing and feeling the good in some of mankind and I would personally like to say I hope you will consider sharing this story and possibly make some of those so-called melon heads think about their destruction and that Mr. Doyle Ritchey might see this as well and know how much I enjoyed our visit that day and admired his good deed. I hope the people of Benton will hear of what he is doing/has done and will express their appreciation.

Thanks very much for writing in to us, Pollyanna – and thanks to Doyle Ritchey and the volunteers by the Saline River.

If other readers saw this and thought you might like to write in about something, email it to [email protected].