Sailors volunteer time, clean up local city park

Sailors from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, including members of the base Diversity Committee, helped to clean one of Corpus Christi’s oldest and most visible parks Feb. 10.

Cole Park, situated along Ocean Drive and the bayfront, sits on 20 acres of donated land from E.B. Cole who gifted it all to the city in the 1930s. Over the decades, it has grown into what it is today.

That growth, according to RP1 Michael Clayton, who organized the event, requires care from the community in order to keep it clean and inviting for others.

“We (Diversity Committee) wanted to honor Black History Month and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by giving back to the community we work and live in,” Clayton said. “I discovered that the city’s Parks and Recreation Department planned a clean-up of the park, and decided to join in.

“One of Dr. King’s principles was to serve in the community one small act at a time. Picking up trash at the park sounded like a simple way to do so. What was really important to me was getting Sailors to participate in this community event.”

Clayton said that 27 Sailors collected enough trash to fill up 15 large trash bags. He also said the Parks and Recreation Department from the city was also there.

“It’s good to see everyone contributing,” he added. “It is not so much about Black History Month, to be involved with your community, as it is to just do it. Just like in the military, we all come together to complete a mission; a common objective and skin color does not matter in that.”

For Clayton, he said it is teaching that matters.

“As a black male Sailor, there have been challenges in my past but I have learned a lot from those challenges. There are just people who don’t believe in what you are, where you come from, or what you represent,” he said. “As a leader, our job is to complete the mission no matter.”

Clayton looks up to Carl Brashear, the first African American to become a Navy Master Diver in 1970, despite having an amputated left leg.

“I relate to him because he entered into a community that did not look like him,” Clayton said. “I was an RP (Religious Program Specialist) that went into (Navy) special operations and honestly, there are not a lot of black men in that world. I caught on to some preconceived notions from others that I had to get past and show was not true.”

For Clayton, community participation is not just showing up to an event to pick up trash at a park, it is about ensuring a diverse culture can use that park together without barriers that existed just 50 years ago.