Eight Heinemann employees rolled up their sleeves this month to take part in United Way of the Greater Seacoast’s annual Day of Caring. United Way connects employees from local businesses with volunteer opportunities at nonprofit agencies. This year the team from Heinemann spent the day at the John Paul Jones House and the Discover Portsmouth Center. Both sites are managed by the Portsmouth Historical Society, a nonprofit organization that also publishes books, manages the Black Heritage Trail, and advocates for historic preservation.
Eight Heinemann employees rolled up their sleeves this month to take part in United Way of the Greater Seacoast’s annual Day of Caring. United Way connects employees from local businesses with volunteer opportunities at nonprofit agencies. This year the team from Heinemann spent the day at the John Paul Jones House and the Discover Portsmouth Center. Both sites are managed by the Portsmouth Historical Society, a nonprofit organization that also publishes books, manages the Black Heritage Trail, and advocates for historic preservation.
Heinemann’s Lynne Costa and Scott Kent spent the morning painting two big walls in the Discover Portsmouth Center’s multipurpose room to get it ready for a new exhibit of 100 oil paintings. Suzanne Heiser, Stacy Holly, Deb Hinkley, David Stirling, Mim Easton, and Elizabeth Valway helped get the historic gardens at the John Paul Jones house ready for fall by painstakingly unwinding bindweed from the roses and other tall plantings, tracing it to the root source, and digging it up to eradicate it forever. They also laid down weed barrier fabric and spread five yards of mulch.
Later in the day, the group got a little history lesson while touring the John Paul Jones House. John Paul Jones, colonial America’s first sea warrior, was a tenant of the Widow Purcell in the house in 1781 while he supervised the building of the Navy’s ship America nearby. Of particular interest was an extensive exhibit on the 1905 signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth at the neighboring Rockingham Hotel that formally ended the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. It’s another little-known fact that the famous cherry trees in Washington, DC, were a gift from the Japanese for the U.S.’s role in the signing of the peace treaty. So it’s thanks to Portsmouth that the cherry trees are there!
In all, more than 700 people from more than 50 companies and groups volunteered their time to serve at 49 nonprofit agencies throughout the service area of United Way of the Greater Seacoast: Rockingham and Strafford Counties in New Hampshire, and Kittery and Eliot, Maine. Day of Caring is held on September 11 each year, which is the National Day of Service. Heinemann is proud to be a bronze-level sponsor of the United Way’s Day of Caring.
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