[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 23, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E721-E722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO LOU VOLK

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 23, 2018

  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, a very special Vietnam Veteran 
in my district has continued his service to others decades after 
fighting in the war.
  Mr. Lou Volk of the Cedar Bluff community of Knoxville, Tennessee has 
been walking along a busy road, picking up trash and praying for his 
neighbors every day for the past 30 years in spite of his injuries from 
the war.
  He started this service when he was a teacher in Oak Ridge, and used 
it as an opportunity to teach his sons about doing for others without 
expecting anything in return.
  At 71 years old, Lou has made it a priority to make the 2 mile walk 
each day in hopes of making our community better both physically and 
spiritually.
  As he is cleaning up items that no one else might dare to touch such 
as used cigarettes, road kill, and food packages, he says prayers for 
cars that pass by.
  He has gotten to know the challenges, suffering, and needs of the 
residents on Bob Kirby Road by saying hello and growing relationships 
with people out in their yards.
  I want to recognize Lou for being such a dedicated caretaker of our 
community. I hope he inspires all of us to do a little more for others, 
without expecting anything in return.
  If more people were out in the community instead of playing video 
games, watching television, or spending hours on social media, they 
could experience the blessings of serving causes greater than 
themselves.
  I include in the Record the article that appeared in the Knoxville 
News Sentinel by Brittany Crocker on May 7th, 2018, entitled ``Every 
Day One Local Vietnam Veteran Picks up Trash and Prays for Everyone Who 
Passes Him'':

       Almost every day for more than 30 years, Vietnam veteran 
     Lou Volk has donned his orange reflective vest and rubber 
     gloves before leaving the house on a mission, armed with a 
     trash grabber and a re-used Kroger bag.
       He's a fixture in Cedar Bluff, where he's been walking his 
     mile-and-a-half route along Bob Kirby Road since he moved 
     there about 12 years ago, cleaning up the litter that seems 
     to reappear almost every day.
       You may have seen him in the mornings with his dog, Rosco. 
     Rosco died in December though, so now Volk walks his route by 
     himself, but not necessarily alone.
       Volk can list the neighbors who live in the homes he 
     passes. He can tell you the names of the dogs barking as he 
     passes, or that the woman in the house on the left just lost 
     her husband, or that the person in the passing truck is 
     struggling with cancer right now.
       Passersby wave or honk their horns at him, veering over the 
     hilly road's median rumble strip to give him a little extra 
     room.
       What they might not know is that Volk prays for every one 
     of them as they pass.
       ``I say a quick, `Jesus, keep em' safe,' '' Volk said, ``so 
     I know that each and every one of them has been prayed for 
     that day.''
       His daily walks are a service he calls ``Agape,'' a Greco-
     Christian term that has been interpreted to mean loving or 
     serving while expecting nothing in return.


                             Making a habit

       Volk started the habit when his children were young in Oak 
     Ridge, where he taught middle-school math and science after 
     he returned from the Vietnam War.
       Before the war, Volk had a bachelor's degree in business. 
     He served as an infantryman from 1969 to 1971 in Vietnam, 
     where he was exposed to agent orange.
       A rocket-propelled grenade explosion left him mostly deaf, 
     and he lives with post-traumatic stress disorder.
       When he returned from the war, he started working in 
     education. Peggy, Volk's wife of 41 years, said she thinks 
     that taking care of children helped him adopt the unrelenting 
     optimism he speaks with today.
       ``The kids were my little soldiers, and I had to take care 
     of them,'' he said.
       One of his favorite things was taking sixth-graders to the 
     Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. ``I always tried 
     to talk to them about the environment and how important it 
     was, and well, you should lead by example.''
       So that's what he did. He started picking up trash around 
     his neighborhood and at Cedar Hill Park, where he took his 
     sons, Aaron and Max, to play on the weekends.
       He continued the habit in Oak Ridge after his sons grew up 
     and left home until he had to retire.
       Volk said school shootings were becoming more common, 
     kindling his post-traumatic stress, so he started thinking 
     about retirement.
       He recalled a school fire drill the teachers weren't 
     informed of about a week after two Arkansas students pulled a 
     fire alarm and opened fire on evacuating students and 
     teachers.
       Volk shut his students in their classroom and went outside 
     to check the school's perimeter. ``What if that had been a 
     copycat?'' Volk said.
       He stayed in teaching for four more years but ultimately 
     retired in 2002 after the Veterans Administration gave him a 
     100 percent disability rating for PTSD.
       Four years later, he and Peggy moved to their Cedar Bluff 
     condo to care for Peggy's mother.


                          Response and ability

       Volk found a sense of continued service in his daily 
     cleanup walks. ``It's my Father's world out there, and I've 
     got to take care of it,'' he said.
       Tuesday was a ``one-bag'' day, but the weekends sometimes 
     take two.
       ``Cigarette butts are by far the most numerous and the most 
     annoying thing out here,'' Volk said, picking up a fluffed-
     out cigarette filter with his trash grabber. ``I'm told it 
     takes three to five years for one of these things to break 
     down.''
       Food wrappers and plastic bottles are also pretty common 
     sights for him. Plastic bottles filled with tobacco spit are 
     the worst, he said, but he picks them up anyway.
       He'll even pick up roadkill if it's lying where children 
     can see it.
       ``It bothered my kids when they were little to see a 
     squirrel lying dead on the street,'' he said. ``And I'm not 
     afraid of it; I grew up on a farm. So, I just pick it up.''
       By now, he knows the areas of the street that have the most 
     poison ivy, and where the thin borders of the road drop off 
     into steep hills.
       He knows he'll usually find some broken glass bottles near 
     people's mailboxes. He suspects people driving by at night 
     make a game of trying to hit mailboxes with the bottles.
       Speeding drivers aren't an uncommon sight on the short 
     stretch of road, but Volk said he usually feels pretty safe. 
     He checks both directions twice before crossing and tries to 
     make sure drivers coming around blind hills can see him.

[[Page E722]]

       He almost got hit once, but he leaped into a ditch with his 
     dog just in time.
       Volk's walks have clearly paid off for him physically. He 
     looks at least a decade younger than his 71 years.
       He and his wife said they want to travel for as long as 
     they are physically able to, and his walks help him keep fit.
       ``That's the selfish part,'' he admitted. ``The nature, the 
     birds chirping, the vitamin D, and I get exercise.''
       Volk said he wants to see other retirees in Knoxville take 
     up the gauntlet and go outside to pick up trash.
       ``Retired people need to walk more, and most of us have the 
     ability,'' he said. ``Just try picking up your neighborhood 
     some day. It doesn't have to be far. My walk is about two 
     miles, but I have the ability so I go.''
       Volk said a fellow Vietnam veteran told him that ability is 
     one half of the word responsibility. ``If you have the 
     ability to do something, what is your response?'' he said.
       ``My response is that I can't do everything, but I when I 
     see something, I can try to do something to make it better.''

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