>Ridgewood retiree Hans-Jurgen Lehman Cleaning trash when no one else will
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
By JOHN CICHOWSKI
ROAD WARRIOR COLUMNIST
This column is usually inspired by gripes, and Hurricane Irene brought enough to fill millions of trash bags, but Hans-Jurgen Lehman is not one to complain. The Ridgewood retiree is a doer.
So, on the day Irene left us, he dodged floods and fallen trees to address an earlier complaint cited here two weeks ago — piles of chronic debris that Paramus, two commercial landlords, dozens of shop owners and two state agencies had ignored on a Route 4 pedestrian bridge.
“I never walk there, but it was time someone cleaned up the mess,” Hans explained.
But something unexpected happened while he was loading decaying food, empty water bottles and broken glass into bags on the Paramus Place side of the bridge, near Kohl’s department store: Wyckoff reader Rosemarie Zimmerer, her son, Eric, and his friend, Morgan Williams, were performing the same task on the Bergen Town Center side across from Century 21.
Their meeting on the span was unplanned. All four were simply responding to this column. And neither Hans, who once ran the Bergen County community service program, nor Rosemarie and the two Bergen Catholic High School juniors expected any reward for stuffing seven trash bags with heavy debris.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/129356678_Citizens_tackle_job_of_cleaning_Rte__4_span.html
