Andrew LeCompte
"We pick up cans and plastic things, tennis balls and cups, plastic
bags and beer cans," says six-year-old Andrew LeCompte, known to his
family and neighbors as the "garbage warrior" of the Alton Baker Park
Canoe Canal. "I usually pick up cans and floating trash. Daddy gets the
sinking trash. Sometimes he jumps in the water." In the spring of 2019,
Andrew and his parents Michael and Heather LeCompte sold their old
home, built in 1965 for Clarence and Marche Chase, owners of the Chase
Gardens greenhouse complex, but more recently engulfed by new
development, and moved to a nearby house on the bank of the canal
across from the park. "I call it a water-house because it's blue like
water," says Andrew, who helped his dad build the boat they use to
cruise the canal almost every evening year-round. "We used our stimulus
check to buy pontoons from a guy in Vancouver," dad Michael explains,
"and put a deck on it made from a plywood partition wall in the old
house. We went out and saw trash in the water." They quickly learned
that their oar wasn't useful for picking things up, so they bought a
four-foot-long grabber tool. "We found vitamin water bottles, fishing
bobbers, and bike locks," Andrew enumerates, and Michael adds, "A whole
car seat, blankets and clothing. Lane Apex garbage pickup has been very
good; they pick up extra bags if our bin is overfull." Andrew's passion
for cleaning also extends to the family house. "I help Mommy clean the
house," he notes, "and I water all the plants." His more esoteric
interests include buses and trains; he has ridden every bus route in
the Lane Transit District, and he can see trains half a mile away from
his back yard. He knows every bus and train engine by its number.
Andrew LeCompte will enter school this fall at Ridgeline Montessori, a
public charter school.
happening people
photograph and story by Paul Neevel
Eugene Weekly / 13 August 2021
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