Falcon Of The Week: Anthony Rutherford

This CB senior has some food for thought for the Oak Park community.

Since junior year Anthony Rutherford (’14) has been making a positive impact in the Oak Park community. Anthony and his father take empty lots in Oak Park and transform them into bountiful vegetable gardens. The lots are littered with trash bags and needles from drug use, but the father and son duo clean up the trash and make the ground fertile enough to plant vegetables.

“Right now it’s just me and my father with the occasional volunteer helping out,” Anthony says. He also shares his hope that more CB students will come and partake in this service project. After spending some time volunteering at the garden, CB student Jeffrey Clara (’14) sys “the garden is amazing”

The garden project is funded solely by the Rutherford family.

“We receive no government funding it comes all from our own pockets,” Anthony says.

To help find more funding for the project. Anthony sells the vegetables that are grown. The vegetables he sells correspond to the seasons. In the fall, you can buy broccoli, lettuce, radishes, and spinach. During the summer you can buy melons, carrots and tomatoes.

You can purchase them preserved in various can sizes or by the pound. When hearing the prices of the vegetables, Mr. Chuck Zanetti, a CB religion teacher comments “man those prices are better than the farmer’s market”.

“We have two gardens right now, one on 6^th avenue and 7^th avenue off of MLK,”  Anthony states.

Both gardens are not gated on purpose. They want the public to see what they’re accomplishing and hopefully inspire someone else to make a difference in their community.

What does Anthony hope to accomplish with the gardens?

“My mission is to get people in the community that are stricken with an addiction to drugs and alcohol to learn to grow their own food,” the senior says.

Anthony tells me that some of the people he’s talked to in Oak Park don’t even know where food comes from. With the garden, he hopes to educate the residents and provide them with sustainability.

This CB student is a great example of the LaSallian core teaching of Concern for the Poor and the schools motto “Enter to learn, leave to serve”. It’s small acts like improving a community with vegetable gardens that show how Christian Brothers students are making the world a better place.