Area resident and park volunteer organizer Cindy Parker picks up trash in the skate park. Parker is behind an effort to maintain and improve park facilities.

This is an excerpt of an article that will appear in Tuesday’s Butler Eagle. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article and find out what Parker wants to clean up at the park.The Butler community will gather Thursday evening to plan a massive cleanup of Father Marinaro Park.Cindy Parker, a resident who grew up on Butler’s South Side, hopes to spark renewed interest in the park. She has a history of volunteering there dating to the turn of the century, when her sons pulled her into a local effort that eventually built the park’s skate park.“It began with a whole lot of kids, including my own, getting fined for skating where they shouldn’t be,” Parker said.Parker said she and other residents started soliciting donations from locals and businesses in 2001. The skate park was built in 2012.For years, she said, it thrived.But as the kids who supported and used it grew older and others replaced them, its caretaking waned.Parker said she was inspired to re-examine the park after reading residents’ complaints in the Butler Eagle and hearing from others. Upon returning to the park, she found a city fixture in need of a hand.Those interested should attend the meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at Father Marinaro Park.