Categories: Dobel Street
Leon's in the game
Leon Nolan is pessimistic about his neighborhood's chances for survival.
Given the blight he's forced to look at from the front porch of his Dobel Street home every day, it's hard to blame him for feeling that way.
I introduced you to Leon back in July, in the detnews.com production about the stricken area around McNichols and Van Dyke. At the time, Leon, a retired auto assembly-line worker, said: "I'm ready to go."
For the past several weeks, Leon's attitude has pretty much stayed the same. He said he appreciated the group's effort at Fletcher Playground, but thought the park and his neighborhood had already breathed their last, were beyond repair.
Well, this morning I made my daily stop at the park on the way to the office and was stunned by what I saw. There was Leon, drenched in sweat, with a ball-peen hammer in hand, breaking up the cement roots of fence posts leveled by a bulldozer yesterday and earlier today.
"I could see from my house what was going on, that this was serious," Leon said to me this morning. "I wanted to be part of it."
Perhaps Leon will stick around the old neighborhood for a while after all.
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