Las Vegas retiree sends $25 to help Boston handle huge snowfalls
Sunny Las Vegas might seem a world away from snow-buried Boston, but a local retiree is doing her part to send warmer weather to the city in need.
And she’s encouraging others to do the same.
Enclosed with Thresia M. Pierce’s letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal editor encouraging Southern Nevadans to mail money to the city of Boston was a $25 check made out to the Boston Globe for “city snow removal.”
Her timing is impeccable — another weather front with lots of snow and hurricane-force winds up to 75 mph was bearing down on the Boston area Saturday night, according to the National Weather Service.
It can be hard for Las Vegas natives to sympathize with people who live and work on the East Coast and have had to shovel record snowfall from their driveways and sidewalks in the past weeks, Pierce said.
“It would be one thing if you could get a light snow and bring a little moisture in, but when it comes and comes and stays and stays, it becomes a hardship,” she said.
Boston’s Public Works Department removed 1,500 truckloads of snow from across Boston’s neighborhoods in one night, the department announced Thursday morning.
In the most recent storm, the city removed more than 10,000 truckloads of snow and dumped them in the city’s 10 “snow farms,” or local dumping grounds. Six thousand of those truckloads were melted to make room for more snow, and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said Thursday that the city was looking for more lots.
Pierce, a retired teacher who was born and raised in Wichita, Kan., moved to Las Vegas with her now ex-husband and their three children in 1969 because her oldest son couldn’t handle the harsh weather.
He was in and out of the hospital 22 times before he was 6 years old because of the humidity and the cold, Pierce said.
Even after teaching for 30 years in the Clark County School District, Pierce recalls scraping snow from her car during Wichita winters and praying that the engine would turn over.
Boston has been blanketed with 6 feet of snow in the past 30 days, the city said in a release. Snowfall already has broken the city’s record of 4.8 feet set in 1978.
And a blizzard this weekend is expected to drop another 14 inches of snow.
“It just suddenly occurred to me,” Pierce said. “I just thought, ‘Boston needs help.’ ”
Pierce sends about two letters a week to the Review-Journal, always handwritten and sealed in an envelope stamped with her photograph.
Her most recent letters advocated spending more tax money on textbooks for Clark County school classrooms and designating Feb. 10 a state holiday in UNLV coaching great Jerry Tarkanian’s name.
But neither letter included a check.
Pierce retired in 2000 and lives on a fixed income in a senior living center in the southwest valley. She collects Social Security from the state of Kansas and teacher’s retirement pay from Clark County.
“This letter is written to suggest that Las Vegas, Nevada residents who read this letter will stop a minute and donate $10, $20 or whatever you can afford to help Boston in their attempt to remove all the snow,” Pierce scrawled on lined paper torn from a spiral notebook.
Pierce cited Boston buildings’ collapsing roofs, East Coast flight cancellations and delays in emergency services as her main reasons for donating.
“This is a way to show respect for another city” when its snow removal budget is being eaten away, Pierce’s letter read.
The Review-Journal will forward Pierce’s check to the Boston Globe with a note attached that it should be donated to the city’s Public Works Department for the purpose of snow removal.
Contact Kimber Laux at klaux@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find her on Twitter: @lauxkimber.
