Cities Week Chamblee Sign Beautification

Thank you to our amazing volunteers who came out to beautify the Chamblee sign yesterday — you made a really positive and visible difference in our great city! We LOVE your energy and dedication to making Chamblee cleaner, greener and more beautiful.

We also want to give a big thank you to our very generous sponsors who made this event possible. We encourage you to support these great local businesses that have made an impactful investment in our community!

Chamblee Sponsor Sign

Yard Improvement Contest

What can you do to make your piece of Chamblee cleaner, greener and more beautiful?

This is a contest designed to help motivate, encourage and inspire all of our residents to improve their own yards. This is NOT a contest to see who has spent the most on their yard or who has the most beautiful, professionally designed landscape. This is a contest for everyone out there who might have a little bit of time and/or money to make some type of IMPROVEMENT to their yard – it could be as simple as sprucing up a mailbox, planting a small flower garden or putting in a new path. Also – if you are living a more urban life here in Chamblee and don’t have a yard – you can enter your front porch, balcony, etc.

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2016 Kick-off Party and Gold Star Awards Ceremony

We had a great turnout at our 2016 Kick-off Party at Chamblee’s Southbound restaurant on Wednesday, Jan 20th! At the event, we honored four outstanding members of the Chamblee community with a KCB Gold Star Award for their help and support in making Chamblee a cleaner, greener and more beautiful place to live, work and play.

Broc Fischer – Gold Star Award Winner

Broc Fischer has been a wonderful friend and supporter of Keep Chamblee Beautiful, since we first began our revitalization in 2015.

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Can you find Broc? Hint: He’s the tall guy, in the back.

Most people around Chamblee know Broc as the Chamblee Chamber of Commerce President and owner of Fischer Funeral Care on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.

What most don’t know is that he came to all 4 of our clean-ups in 2015, provided most of the supplies, picked up more trash than anyone and always stayed until the very end.

He’s always offering to help, always willing to donate supplies and equipment and 12038534_1619470918297495_4397234267354237259_nhas even offered his business as a meeting place, if and when we outgrow sitting around a table at the Atlanta Chinatown Mall Food Court.

Broc also completely saved the day when it started raining before our Legacy Bench Ceremonies at Keswick Park. For lack of better planning, we called him 10 minutes beforehand and asked if he had a tent we could use. Within 7 minutes he was at the park setting up one of his tents. Totally saved the day for us!

THANK YOU Broc!12191185_1623391991238721_335426920751913193_o

Crystal Lein – Gold Star Award Winner

Crystal Lein is a paraprofessional at Huntley Hills elementary school and has been running the schools recycling programs and spearheading the school’s environmental efforts for over a decade. She has been fulfilling Keep Chamblee Beautiful’s mission long before we ever had a mission.

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Crystal Lein and Allison Hutchinson, wonderful recycling and environmental advocates at Huntley Hills!

Her nickname around the school is The Lein Green Recycling Machine!

When Allison Hutchinson, 5th grade Montessori teacher at Huntley Hills, initially started recycling at the school, she and Crystal took everything recyclable home with them every day. They recycled paper, cans and even Styrofoam on their own, personal time, driving to drop-off centers.

The volume started to grow beyond what their cars could hold and even though DeKalb County started recycling, they wouldn’t pick-up from the school. That didn’t stop Crystal! She sought out private companies and negotiated contracts to ensure Huntley Hills Elementary School continued to recycle.  When Huntley Hills annexed into Chamblee she worked with our city’s Public Works department and now Chamblee is picking up the recycling.

Crystal often comes in early, works during her lunch hours and stays late – just to make sure everything gets recycling.  She truly leads by example.

More importantly than anything else, Crystal has been spearheading the Environmental Club and teaching the next generation of Chamblee residents and business owners the importance of conserving resources, recycling and caring for our planet. She is making a huge difference today and her work with the kids is going to make a huge difference in decades to come.
Congratulations and THANK YOU Crystal Lein!

KCB Southbound Kickoff 2016-23

Dwight Stone Legacy Bench

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Dwight Stone was a resident of DeKalb County for over 40 years, 33 of those in the Chamblee area. If you live anywhere in the Chamblee/Doraville area at one point or another you likely encountered the handsome guy in the wheelchair.

Dwight had an infectious smile and  giving spirit. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Deborah,  for nearly 40 years. Deborah planted a memorial garden as a testament to the love they shared, after his passing in 2010.

Dwight Stone
Dwight with Ofc. K taylor at the 2006 fireworks at Chamblee’s Keswick Park.

Mr. Stone believed in working in the community you lived in and he was over the moon with pride when his youngest child, Gudrun, was hired by the Chamblee Police Department in 2006. Dwight would often grocery shop at the newly opened Walmart just to stop by and tease officers about working with his daughter.

When interviewed, Gudrun Stone, spoke lovingly about her father: “My father was a giving person and an advocate for Friends of Disabled Adults and Children (www.fodac.org). The wheelchair that was ever present did not limit him nor did it hinder him from enjoying life. He was a wonderful steward to his church family and a fixture in the Embry Hills neighborhood, always with a kind word and a warm smile for the people he met.”

Keep Chamblee Beautiful helped Gudrun and her family raise the money to honor her father with a legacy bench at the entrance to the Chamblee Police Station. The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony was held on Sunday, November 22nd at 2pm.