LHENA to Honor Standout Neighbors at Annual Meeting

LHENA, pronounced "Lee-Nah," is one of about 70 neighborhood organizations recognized by the City of Minneapolis and covers Lowry Hill East, the triangular district known as the Wedge. The association grew out of a conversation among fifteen residents on August 4, 1970, and was formally incorporated on February 18, 1971. From the start its board organized committees on housing, education, membership and ecology, and the group went on to start one of the city's first neighborhood newspapers, The Wedge.

The annual recognition is meant to capture both recent effort and long service, acknowledging work done in the past year alongside a decade or more of quiet involvement. The honorees tend to be the people who hold a neighborhood together unseen: the volunteer who shows up every month, the longtime board member who never sought attention.

There is a practical logic to it. An association run almost entirely by volunteers cannot pay its people, so recognition is one of the few currencies it has. Naming contributors in front of their neighbors encourages more of the behavior the neighborhood depends on and signals to newcomers what is valued here.

The recognition folds into LHENA's marquee civic gathering, where the board reports on its work and conducts business. The association holds monthly public board meetings on the third Wednesday of each month from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at its office at 2744 Lyndale Avenue South, and the board seats 11 community members. The annual meeting, more than a formality, is the night the Wedge takes stock of who held it together over the past year and says so out loud.