Nelson Serves Community As Volunteer

Dennis Nelson, this year’s Wolf Point Optimist of the Year, finds volunteer community service work to be very rewarding.

“It keeps me out of trouble for one thing. It’s fun,” Nelson said. “Overall, it’s all to help the kids.”

One of the projects that Nelson is very active with is transporting smashed cans to Sidney in order to have them be recycled.

“The Optimist Club gets the money from that,” Nelson explained. “They use it to buy books for the school library.”

Nelson, who moved to Wolf Point from Savage about 10 years ago, heads the group’s highway clean-up projects.

“I said I would do it one year and I’ve kept doing it,” Nelson said. “I help wherever they need it.”

He’s hopeful that more people becomes involved in the Optimist Club or similar organizations.

“People are getting older and they don’t seem to be any younger ones coming in,” Nelson said of community service groups. “I don’t know what will happen in the future.”

Nelson joined the Optimist Club about seven or eight years ago. He has served as a director and vice president for the club. His wife, Karen, was already an Optimist about two years before and their son, Eric, joined about the same time as Dennis.

“All three of us are members,” Dennis said of the family involvement. “It’s kind of an oddity.”