It was a beautiful day in their neighborhoods, as Mister Rogers used to say on television. So they came to make their neighborhoods better.

“Our new president asked us to go out and volunteer, and we did,” said Dawn Noble of Langley as she raked up tree needles and leaves in front of the Good Cheer Food Bank in Bayview on a cool but sunny Monday afternoon.

She and her daughters, Maggie, 7 and Lulu, 6, were among more than 100 persons in three South End locations who heeded now-President Barak Obama’s call for a national day of service to coincide with Martin Luther King Day.

Setting the tone, Obama himself painted walls in a homeless youth center in Washington D.C. on Monday, while his wife Michelle packed care packages for U.S. service people abroad.

“I asked them if they wanted to come, and they said yes,” Noble said of her daughters. “So we made some bread for the food bank, and came out to spend an hour or two.”

They were among a group of volunteers getting a start on Good Cheer’s ambitious new garden project, while others worked inside sorting donated items and stocking food shelves.

The nonprofit community group South Whidbey Commons organized the Good Cheer gathering, along with similar cleanup-fixup efforts at Island Coffeehouse & Books and the Brookhaven senior housing community in downtown Langley.

The trio of projects were part of a nationwide coordinated effort Monday, sponsored by the National Corporation for Services and the volunteer organization AmeriCorp, said South Whidbey Commons coordinator Victoria Santos, who organized the local efforts.

Good Cheer’s new garden will take up most of the south quadrant of its property and include a planting area, an irrigation system, fencing, raised beds, a greenhouse and fruit trees, said Cary Peterson of Langley, Good Cheer garden coordinator.

“We were going to get started in February, but we decided to kick off a little early to take advantage of the day of service,” she said.

At least 25 people worked outside, spreading soil and trimming brush. One group worked at tables, putting together seed packets to distribute to Good Cheer customers.

Will Black, 53, of Clinton, helped pile brush trimmings into the back of a truck.

“Martin Luther King Day was meant to be a day off, but we’re making it a day on,” he said. “I could be home watching all the speeches on

television, or I could come out and do something.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” Black continued. “It’s a great day to get together with other people and do something positive.”

A short distance away, Terry Welch was spreading some pungent soil with a rake and shovel.

Welch, a Coupeville Middle School teacher, plans to start a community garden with her students, and was at Good Cheer to help out and get some experience.

“It was my day off, and I thought it would be a good idea to see how it’s done,” she said. “This was also a good chance to get out and do a little community service.”

She said she hopes to start a garden similar to the school-community effort at Langley Middle School.

Pete Martin, 64, who lives nearby, was helping Welch spread the, um, wealth.

“A garden that supplies the food bank is really a good idea,” he said. “I’m inspired by the whole idea of a national day of service. It shows a national shift in a positive way.”

Shirley Tinkler and Lynn Willeford, both of Langley, were smoothing topsoil in a new planting bed nearby.

Tinkler, a member of Master Gardeners, said this kind of community service seemed like a natural way to honor both the nation and Martin Luther King.

“For me it’s a service day,” Willeford said. “I volunteer here half days, and I know what it means to the people to have fresh produce.”

Kathy McLaughlin, Good Cheer executive director, said it’s nice to have a president that supports volunteerism.

“We wouldn’t be where we are without our volunteers,” she said. “If we could keep this momentum going, we’d be that much closer to ending hunger on Whidbey Island.”

“I’m sure Martin Luther King is smiling down on us right now,” McLaughlin added. “He was a visionary, and I think he’d be very, very proud.”

Peterson said work parties on the garden project will begin in earnest next month. For information, or to volunteer, e-mail her at garden@goodcheer.org, or call her at 221-6046.

In downtown Langley, volunteers were no less industrious at Island Coffeehouse & Books. At least a dozen volunteers, many of them young, worked inside sorting and organizing books, and outside doing a general cleanup of the grounds.

“We’re doing it as a way to support our beloved community,” said Gena Kraha of South Whidbey Commons. “We’re giving back. And we’re getting stuff ready for spring to come along.”

Throughout the day, coffee house staff were running continuous video broadcasts of Martin Luther King’s speeches, to inspire the volunteers and infuse them with a sense of history, Kraha said.

Meanwhile, Jackie Edwards of Edmonds swept the sidewalk alongside the coffee house, while her daughter Chloe, 10, collected fallen apples, twigs and leaves from the nearby planting area.

Edwards, who volunteers at the coffee house one day a week, bringing along students from Edmonds Community College, said her daughter accompanies her whenever Chloe’s out of school.

“I want to show her the gift of service,” she said.

Susie Richards, co-director of South Whidbey Commons, said another group of about eight volunteers had been over at the nearby Brookhaven senior housing community.

They were doing gardening and other chores for a couple of residents — Evie Brumbeck, 92 and Marilyn Gobel, who’s in her 80s, Richards said.

She said South Whidbey Commons hopes to continue that effort one day a month, “a kind of Tuesday at Brookhaven Day.”

Meanwhile, Martin Luther King was honored in a more traditional manner by a couple of area churches.

St. Augustine Episcopal Church in Freeland hosted its fourth annual South Whidbey commemoration of King’s life Monday afternoon at the church, sponsored by the church’s Peace Fellowship.

Featured speaker was Bishop Greg Rickel, who grew up in Arkansas and, prior to joining

St. Augustine’s, was rector of an African American parish in Austin, Texas.

Dick Hall, Peace Fellowship representative, said the event focused on King’s call for economic justice. Readings of excerpts from King’s speeches and letters of civil rights volunteers were interspersed with a narration describing the Poor People’s Campaign and the issue of economic injustice, Hall said.

The service ended with a comparison between the “Moses generation” of the 1960s movement activists represented by King, and the “Joshua” generation symbolized by Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States.

In Langley, the United Methodist Church presented the film “Citizen King” on Friday.

The award-winning 2004 documentary about the last five years of King’s life draws on the personal recollections and eyewitness accounts.

A Baptist minister, King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president.

His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.

He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.