By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Don Scruggs of Silverton and his son Steven Scruggs, 8, of Avondale plant flower bulbs Saturday in Over-the-Rhine. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

WEST END - For Steven Scruggs, age 8, making a difference on Saturday morning was as easy as one, two, three.

Steven planted daffodil and daylily bulbs for Saturday's annual Make a Difference Day near the corner of Linn Street and Central Parkway. First, he explained, you take a shovel or pick axe and dig 6 inches into the ground. Then you toss in a bulb and cover it with dirt. Then you wait for spring. .

"It's fun because I get to work in the dirt with my dad," Steven said, wearing an orange safety vest about six sizes too big and his father's Stihl chainsaw cap. "And when it rains, you get a flower. It's kind of like planting a miracle."

Steven and his father were joined by more than 1,000 volunteers across Greater Cincinnati Saturday who had one goal in mind: to take these small community beautification projects in mostly impoverished areas and turn them into a big community miracle.

"We want to do something unselfish, something that will help other people, and in Cincinnati there's a pretty great need for volunteers," said Katie Gray, 20, a Miami University student raking leaves in Over-the-Rhine Saturday.

For the fourth consecutive year, Ohio led the nation in the number of volunteer service projects planned for Saturday's Make a Difference Day, a national volunteer event where millions flood their communities for beautification, clean-up and revitalization projects.

Ohioans registered nearly 300 service projects for one of two annual nationwide days of service, the other being the Great American Clean-up in April.

A drive about town Saturday morning showed many service projects:

• Gov. Bob Taft helped the Covedale Girl Scout Troop clean up the Price Hill Community Center and the adjacent Dempsey Park.

• High school and elementary school students and staff gathered at William H. Taft Elementary School in Mount Auburn to plant and mulch.

• More than 40 doctors and staff from Cincinnati Eye Institute painted, landscaped and cleaned the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in North College Hill.

• AmeriCorps Cincinnati members joined Over-the-Rhine residents and Xavier University students to paint and clean the interior of Peaslee Neighborhood Center in Over-the-Rhine, giving the center a new look to commemorate its 20th birthday.

• Hundreds of students from St. Gertrude School in Madeira volunteered at nine local charities and raked leaves at 20 homes of elderly residents.

• Sycamore High School student Amanda Moore, 16, kicked off a service project she is coordinating to make 5,000 blankets for foster children in the Cincinnati area. She started Saturday by making fleece blankets at Sycamore Christian Church for her American Heritage Girls Troop 25 100-hour project.

According to Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, the local organizer of Make a Difference Day, Greater Cincinnati had seven highway beautification projects and 27 community improvement projects going on Saturday. Organizers said there were a number of other service projects that didn't register with the official channels.

"It's really a community pride event," said Kerry Crossen, events manager for Keep Cincinnati Beautiful. "All these people coming together to beautify their area shows they really care about their community."

Down the street from where Steven Scruggs and his father planted bulbs, 20 students from Miami University, Moeller High School and Ursuline Academy raked leaves, picked up trash and cleaned out alleys and a park on a block of Republic Street in Over-the-Rhine.

Georgia Keith, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1968, passed out rakes and instructions.

"Remember about the alleys behind my house," Keith said as the students scattered throughout the block, into the alley and toward the tiny Republic Street Playground.

Ten Miami students from the Gamma Epsilon Lambda coed service fraternity woke early Saturday to drive to Cincinnati and for an afternoon project in Hamilton. They joined another dozen Moeller and Ursuline students who volunteer in the city neighborhood every other weekend.

"Seeing these teenage guys down here, I love it," said Mike Moroski, an English teacher at Moeller High School who organizes students to volunteer in Over-the-Rhine.

"It's a great experience for them to see how a great majority of people live. This stuff is easy to ignore, but it breeds a healthy empathy to come down here."

Keith, an in-school suspension coordinator at a nearby elementary school, sees the drug dealers on a regular basis.

By having dozens of people helping her whip the neighborhood into shape - clean, bright and flowery - she knows she can send the dealers a message.

"These 'sales people' around the corner," she said with a smirk, "they don't like cleanliness. We're sending them a message without even opening our mouths."

E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com