Volunteers paint Berston Field House boxing room - ABC 12 – WJRT – Flint, MI

(02/12/13) - Armed with brushes and gallons on purple and gold paint, workers like Olympic gold medal winner Claressa Shields made the boxing room at Berston Field House look a little nicer. The gold paint represents winners.

"The purple is for royalty and that's been in our gym since my coach was boxing here," Shields said.

Money for projects like this is hard to find, so organizers turned to donated help and material to fix up the place that has given many athletes a start.

"I've been boxing here at Berston since I was 11 years old," Shields said.

"It's taking the kids off the street and we're given them a great place, a place to come in, a place they can call a home of their own to train and give them that chance at maybe another gold medal," said Don Mandeville, Home Depot district manager.

"We are a community that's very resilient. All we have to do is ask and we will have people come out and be willing to help. The volunteer spirit here in the City of Flint is just remarkable. A lot of times we ask not, we get not," said Bryant Nolden, 3rd ward Flint City Council member.

About 50 volunteers were there to work on the project. They'll be back in March with reinforcements because they're going to take on the Berston gym.

"We're going to have a number of volunteers, so what we're asking is if anybody else in the community would like to come out on March 5 at 9 in the morning, we're going to paint the big gym at Berston and it's just a labor of love," Nolden said.

After only a couple of hours of work, there was a noticeable improvement.

"It turned out nice, too. Looks real slick down here," Shields said.