For a decade, a dedicated group of Henry County area residents have continued their efforts to improve the health and beauty of the Big Blue River. The Friends of The Big Blue River celebrated their 10th anniversary with a program on Oct. 1 at Westwood Park. The group conducts several river cleanups a year, as well as water monitoring and analysis at several locations collecting E-coli water samples at several sites for the Big Blue River Watershed Project; having "canoe Big Blue" events; encouraging landowners to maintain and improve the riparian corridor and increasing recreational use.

During the group's 10 years, volunteers have removed 943 tires, hundreds of bags of trash, and dozens of shopping carts, steel posts, buckets, steel drums, appliances, pieces of fencing and metal, gas tanks, car seats, road signs, newspaper boxes, chairs, car parts, wading pools, box springs and bicycles. Jeff Ray, president of the Friends of The Big Blue River, said one of the most unusual items removed from the river was a box of WWII ammunition.

Randy Jones was one of the original members of the volunteer group. "There's an old saying that 'it's amazing what someone can accomplish if they don't care who gets the credit,'" Jones said. "And I really don't think that epitomizes anybody more than Jeff. "I think we all know he's a man of few words and kind of likes to stay out of the limelight," Jones said about Ray. "But if I did as much work, made as many phone calls, contacted as many people, set up as many meetings and worked on that river as hard as he has, I'd sure want someone to nominate me for the Nobel Peace Prize. But I think he would feel very un-comfortable about that."

Jones proposed a toast to Ray "for all the work, all the effort, all the time that he's put, not only into the Friends of The Big Blue River, but into a multitude of conservation organizations, not only for Henry County, but for all of eastern Indiana." "The thing is, none of this could have gotten done without everybody else," Ray said. "So I don't know why you're saying something about me." Someone suggested that it was Ray's idea to start the volunteer group to clean up the Big Blue River. "Everybody just said 'we need to do this,' " Ray said. "So I worked on it."

Ray said he read a book titled "From The Bottom Up," by river rescuer Chad Pregracke, and that inspired him to start working on cleaning up the Big Blue River. Pregracke was a high school student when he first saw trash that littered the bottom of the Mississippi River, which launched him on a quest to clean up the river. Ray said he read an article about Pregracke and his book in a newspaper in February 2000. "I read it and thought 'hey, we ought to be doing something like that.'" So Ray said he and Dennis York did their first river cleanup in the fall of 2000. The following year, the Friends of The Big Blue River was organized.