North Dakota Students Clean Up Sleepy Hollow

What do Crystal Falls, MI; Roscommon, MI; Boston Township, OH; Gettysburg, PA; and Sleepy Hollow, NY all have in common? Known for their hauntings, each enjoyed a visit from a large group of North Dakota college students doing a "haunted mystery" service tour of the county.

“We picked Sleepy Hollow because our tour was a haunted mystery tour," said group leader Samantha Underhill. "Meaning that when the participants came on the bus they didn't know what towns we were stopping in (the mystery part). The haunted part was that every town we stopped in was also known for a haunting of some kind.”

The nonprofit Students Today, Leaders Forever’s goal is to reveal leadership through service, relationships and action. Over 40 students from the University of North Dakota took this Pay It Forward Tour as an alternative spring break trip. Their chapter of STLF sent out three other busses that week: two to San Antonio, TX and one to Denver, CO. 

The group left school on Friday before their spring break and stopped in five towns along the way, doing service projects during the day and leadership activities at night. The fifth stop was Sleepy Hollow. The sixth stop, Washington, DC, was the “celebration city,” where they met up with multiple other buses from other schools doing the same thing and participated in one big service project with everyone.

While in Sleepy Hollow for one day last week, the students were put to work cleaning debris from Beekman, Cortlandt and Valley streets, amounting to about 25 bags worth. Another group cleaned debris from Douglas Park.

The village thanked them for their efforts with authentic NY pizza slices from Fleetwood Pizza and we gave them a necessary spooking with a cemetery tour from historian Jim Logan. The students posed in front of our metal headless horseman sculpture and hung out in the new orange pumper truck.

On their two-day "odyssey" home from D.C. by bus, Underhill took a moment to share these photos from their Sleepy Hollow visit with Patch. We are so grateful for this special group.

Find out more about STLF at www.stlf.net. 

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