On Saturday, June 22, the Meredith Court in Pampa held their first annual summer block party and plans for next year’s party are already in the works.
Local vendors. food trucks and car and motorcycle gurus lined up along West 25th Avenue for a community-wide, family-friendly event that included train rides and a bounce house for the kiddos.
Live music filled the street as citizens shopped, ate, and eagerly awaited for the next drawing to see if they were the lucky winner of a prize, laughter and chatter filling the summer air.
The residents of the Meredith Court joined in on the fun and were given extra special treatment to eat free from any food truck of their choosing.
Through the coordinating efforts of Meredith Court Activities Director Kristie Fuller, First Baptist Church and Lonnie Shelton, the block party was a huge success and ideas for next year’s event to be even bigger and better are already circulating among those who helped make the event possible.
Lonnie Shelton has always had love for cars and has collected several impressive classic and muscle cars throughout the years, many of which have been featured in car shows all around the Texas Panhandle.
But along with that passion, Lonnie realized years ago that his passion could be used as something to not only bring communities together, but to save lives as well.
More than 10 years ago, Lonnie started the Show and Shine Car Show in Amarillo, working closely with the Amarillo Cancer Society, the Harrington Cancer Center, among many, many other organizations and local departments to help encourage men to come to a free car show and take a simple blood test paid for completely out of Lonnie’s own pocket. The test was specifically to detect prostate cancer.
During that first year, more than 400 hundred men came out and took the test, with 18 lives being saved that day.
“That was just from a car show,” Lonnie said. “Now what’s that all about? That’s not cars-that’s caring about people.”
Lonnie has done all kinds of ministry not only in Texas, but all over the world as well and his mission is simple: to help change lives for the better.
“Whatever you do in life, there’s more of a purpose in it other than for you. We all need to recognize we have opportunities to alter people’s lives in ways that you may have never even thought,” Lonnie said. “There’s opportunities to use everything you’ve got. It doesn’t make any difference what your passion is, it’s how you use your passion that’s important.”
“When you stand here and look around, you see all sorts of people, but we’re all people. We need to realize that we have a whole lot more in common than we have differences.”
