Published: November 09, 2009 11:59 pm      

NORTH TONAWANDA: Outreach center replaces vandalized horse

Last year, volunteers at North Tonawanda’s Community Outreach Center were outraged by a senseless act of vandalism.

The victim: a custom replica carrousel horse, which was torn from its perch outside the center’s front entrance.

No arrests were ever made and police said early on there were no suspects.

Now a year later, North Tonawanda Meals on Wheels, which anchors the center also home to the food bank and clothes closet, is announcing it has replaced its signature horse that stood outside Twin City Community Outreach Center, next to SportsPlex at 100 Ridge Road.

Meals Coordinator Joy Welch resolved from the start to replace the custom symbol of the city’s past — a specially decorated and altered rocking horse that represents hours of work by one of the center’s weekly volunteers.

“With the ensuing publicity, we did have offers of money and help, but did not take advantage of them,” Welch said. “(We felt) that any money we were given would best go for the actual Meals on Wheels service.”

However, the artist who had created the first replica horse had at the time also promised to make a new one as soon as the appropriate rocking horse could be found to serve as a starting point.

Volunteer and artist Joyce Munch, who works preparing meals once a week at the center, recently got just what she was looking for.

Co-volunteer Bill Welch was driving and spotted the perfect rocking horse amid a pile of garbage in front of a local home. He picked it up, threw it in the trunk, and Munch has since worked her magic to create a new carousel-style display horse, even better than the old one by some accounts.

“Joyce appeared at my office door with the most beautiful carrousel horse you have ever seen. She worked for weeks cleaning and sanding the found horse. And then more weeks were devoted to meticulously painting it so that it looks just like it came from Herschell-Spillman a hundred years ago,” Welch said.

But the new horse won’t be put in place until next spring, when it will be displayed on a pole, just as the old one was.

On the subject of fears the new horse could be destroyed in the same way as the last, Welch said no one with the outreach center wants fear to run their lives.

“We hope that, perhaps, the idea of such a landmark for the home of NT Meals on Wheels might bring about some respect for it and the city it stands for,” she said. “And besides, we’re not going to let such a mentality that would derive pleasure from such destruction run our lives.”

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.