Sherwood Shores: Exciting And Positive Achievements: 2019

I believe our Sherwood Shores community has created exciting and positive differences in our community this year. I want to update people about what our community has accomplished that I am aware of.

Disclaimer: I am not aware of everything every person or organization in our community has done to make us better. I apologize in advance for my ignorance.

A few of us have been trying to gauge what Sherwood Shores, Texas, and Willis, Oklahoma, need in terms of social services. We accomplished this by connecting with three small businesses and one corporate retail business. So far, we found that there are needs for:

More attention should be focused on providing everyday items that food stamps do not provide such as diapers, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.

The Angel Tree supplied two families with new clothes. No donor knows who the recipients are. The census is not in on this one. I have a suggestion and an observation. Possibly more attention should be focused on providing school clothes in the fall.

On this issue, I do not know about the information received by the other ladies involved. I found that neighbors who have slightly used children’s clothes, extra linens, etc. would like to know where or who to give them to. These items do not include garage sale items.

There is a huge need for legal and convenient disposal of large trash, e.g. mattresses. The Sherwood Shores Association (SSA) did a great job on organizing the 2019 spring dumpster day. That was amazing for me, so thank you SSA.

Debbie Vincent took on advocating for our community to monitor a sticky situation (for lack of better words) involving Sherwood Shores Park and organizing a petition to prove to the federal agency, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, that we who live here know what’s best for our community park. Plus, Debbie does a whole bunch of other cool stuff.

I found that our community needs a better understanding of the few homeless people that might stray into our party destination and attractive nuisance lifestyle on our Lake Texoma peninsula. Our community needs to understand and assess different situations when homeless people are in need. That may be because they are on the road to a better place. It may be because of mental issues like PTSD with veterans. My interactions with two homeless but capable men proved successful this fall. This requires experience and an education in social services. I would like to hold a meeting to discuss assessing people in need with a social work professional and a representative from the Salvation Army at the community center.

I also saw two cultures come together after misunderstandings concerning Sherwood Food Mart. So “High Five” to Sham, Kazi, and Faez for putting up with my harsh criticisms. Once we came together and had a face to face, Sherwood Food Mart has “Pony’d Up” and become a valuable and interactive member of the Sherwood Shores community.

I want to thank Bryan and Danny at the Willis Food Mart for helping with and calling attention to the two homeless men. Danny is a tall good-lookin’ man. Both the homeless men were tall and used-to-be-good-lookin’ men, just older…than Danny. Danny donated clothes to Randy. Kristie Abbot fearlessly, by herself, drove Randy to his destination. Jamie helped me assess Randy’s mental and physical state.

Bryan alerted me to the other man’s condition. Stacy Knox and her husband and Sherrie Parish went out of their ways to make sure he had enough to eat. I spent a few weeks assessing his situation. The Grayson County Shelter really helped me out.

SO! We do not have a homeless situation here, but we do have a need to ensure that people who have no food security or monetary security do not fall below survival mode. These types of individuals are worth helping.

I want to thank Angela, the manager at Dollar General, for recognizing our community’s needs and donating goods to one of our local churches.

I want to give Cooter’s Garage a shout out for being so heartwarmingly good-natured and offering a community activity. I will look for your reopening.

All in all, most of these Sherwood Shores community improvements are actual achievements with widespread popularity because we, as Sherwood Shores neighbors, made quality use of nextdoor.com.

The ladies involved in securing the food box and operating the Angel Tree experiment may have more input to add to my or criticisms about my observations. The above statements are the sole opinion of the author of this post and not meant to offend anyone.