The Grayson County Clerk’s office has recently started selling homemade birdhouses as part of a state-wide effort to raise money for Kentucky’s veterans.
County Clerk Sherry Weedman said the Clerk’s office sells the birdhouses for $20, and all proceeds for their sale goes to funding Kentucky’s three veterans homes.
Weedman said she learned of the fundraiser during a November 2012 Clerk’s meeting and ordered her office’s first dozen birdhouses last Christmas from Letcher County Clerk Winston Meade.
Meade, who makes the birdhouses out of discarded license plates with his father-in-law in his spare time, said he started the project in 2008, after learning about the fundraiser at a Clerk’s conference.
Meade said he thought the sale of birdhouses would be a good way to raise money for veterans, so shortly thereafter, he approached his father-in-law, a retiree with five brothers who are veterans, about making and shipping the birdhouses to Clerk’s offices in eastern Kentucky.
Over time, Meade said as he took his birdhouses to various Clerk’s conferences, more and more Clerk’s offices started ordering them.
Weedman said out of the 120 counties in Kentucky, more than half are selling the birdhouses, and the proceeds from their sale have gone toward providing veterans with various items, such as phone cards to contact their familys, blankets, wheel chairs, and hands-free computers for stroke victims.
Meade said that for the month of March this year, he shipped nearly 400 birdhouses to County Clerk’s offices across the state, and in 2012, sales of the birdhouses raised a total $39,000, which was evenly distributed among the veterans homes in eastern, western, and central Kentucky.
Weedman said Meade presented Jane Beshear, wife of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, with a birdhouse, as well.
Individuals interested in purchasing a birdhouse or making a donation may do so at the County Clerk’s office, located at 10 Public Square in Leitchfield.
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