This morning I conveniently dropped my wife off at the local shopping plaza to do Christmas shopping and then returned home. I grabbed a quick cup of coffee as I texted the Frankfort Lions Club Winter Coat Team to join me in the final coat sort. An hour later I was on the stage at the Founder’s Center where we are storing coats until they are processed. I like ot tell people that we will be on stage singing and dancing as we sort and bag coats. I always get a strange look. As I arrived I spotted Lion Louise dragging a large bag of coats up to the stage. She is my first lieutenant on the team. We dragged our sorting tables into place and attacked the pile of coats. The job is simple we merely place men’s, women’s, and children’s coats onto separate tables. The hardest part of the job is to tell the difference between a man’s and a women’s coat, followed by a teenager’s coat versus an older person’s coat. We don’t take a lot of time to decide it is simpler to make a mistake than it is to eat up time figuring it out.
Lion Mike showed up and I got him started bagging; ten to a bag all of the same gender. Close the bag and mark it with a piece of duct tape designating the gender, M, W, or C. It’s hard work, but somebody has to do it. Within forty-five minutes the three of us had sixteen bags of coats ready for delivery. I pushed the envelope and asked Louise or Mike if they were interested in delivering. Louise raised her hand to take sixty coats to the New Lenox Food Pantry on Monday, they are closed on Saturdays. Mike was headed into the direction of Morningstar Mission resale shop in New Lenox and said he would take sixty coats to them. That left me with forty coats which I drove over to the Salvation Army donation center in Chicago Heights.
The 2021 Winter Coat Drive is formally completed. All total we collected 550 coats from 1 November thru 15 December and delivered them to: The Frankfort Township Food Pantry, The South Suburban Crisis Center serving battered women, The Kibby & Vainney Angles NFP Inc,. serving the homeless of Joliet, Morningstar Mission, and the New Lenox Township Food Pantry. I estimate the dollar value of these used coats to be $5500.00, a sizable donation to the community. The Frankfort Lions have impacted five hundred and fifty people in need at a time when a coat is most appreciated.
Most of us don’t think about what life would be like without a coat to keep us warm during the cold months, but there are people among us who know what I’m talking about. The people who live on the street throughout the winter months are among the ones we target with this drive. I extend my fondest gratitude and thanks to those who donated coats, many with price tags still attached. We know you sacrificed to help others. The Frankfort Food Pantry has 300 families registered, and they are who we service first. I wish them a very warm and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Filed under: Biography, Lions Club, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: Coats, Food Pantry, Homeless | Leave a comment »
