Youths Help Elderly Man With Home Cleanup : Moorpark: Students come to the rescue after reading of his plight with the city over the condition of his house and property.

When the city of Moorpark ordered him to clean up his ramshackle home or face steep fines, 75-year-old resident Edward Bradley never thought he would have the strength to do the work himself.

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He didn’t have to.

On Wednesday, five students from the Seventh-day Adventist Academy in Newbury Park began cutting back hedges and hauling off discarded junk crowding Bradley’s yard at the northwest corner of Millard Street and Susan Avenue. The students offered their help after their Bible teacher, Don Kilpatrick, read about Bradley’s plight in the newspaper.

“We saw he needed some help, so here we are,” Kilpatrick said.

The work, including cutting the lawn, trimming hedges, and painting the outside of the home, will probably take until the end of the week, Kilpatrick said.

Last month, the city issued a cleanup order to Bradley, a retired Air Force major and the last man to fly the Enola Gay before it was decommissioned after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The cleanup deadline was set for next Wednesday.

Bradley still has to cut back the overgrown hedges and trees, pick up the piles of used-car parts strewn about his lawn, and generally overhaul his rundown property by the deadline or face fines of up to $5,000. If the violations continue, he could even go to jail, city officials said, although that seems highly unlikely.

As Bradley’s health has declined over the last few years, so has the condition of his home.

On Wednesday, a bit winded from his work, Bradley gestured to the students sweating over their tasks and said, “I could have done all this in an hour, but I guess I’m just not as frisky as I used to be.

“I’m a charity case now,” he said.

Trying to alleviate Bradley’s discomfort in accepting the help, Kilpatrick told him the work was not charity.

“Hey, this is just people helping people,” he said.

Scott Kirk, 15, attacked the foot-high weeds growing in the back yard with a gasoline-powered weed eater, while Lilly Tryer, 16, piled rusted tools and old canisters into a wheelbarrow.

She said the work was just another way for students at the school to help others. “We don’t have to do this, we just want to,” she said.

The school, she said, also sends groups of students each spring to build schools and orphanages in Mexico.

Along with cleaning up the outside of his home, a court commissioner also ordered Bradley to allow a building inspector to check the inside of the house, but Bradley has refused.

So while the group of volunteers made progress on the outside of Bradley’s home, he could still face fines for barring inspection of the inside. In fact, he declined the volunteers’ offer to clean up the inside of the home, and said he expects that will bring a fine.

“My brother told me I should get ready to be soaked,” he said.