Food for thought

Published 7:36 am Friday, February 29, 2008

Shoreline and Lake Forest Park families lined up Saturday, Dec. 18 to benefit from the contributions of their charitable neighbors.

What started out as a small endeavor on the part of the Shoreline Fire Department has grown into a community-wide day of giving.

The Shoreline Parent Teacher Association Council and the fire department together organize a food and gift drive for families of children attending Shoreline schools.

John Mounsey is a firefighter in Shoreline and he has been organizing the children’s gift drive for 12 years, although he’s volunteered for the drive since its inception 25 years ago.

“We started out small and it’s grown from there,” Mounsey said.

That first year, Mounsey recalled providing gifts for about 50 families. Firefighters delivered wrapped gifts and some canned food to the families from a fire engine when the drive began, Mounsey said.

This year, around 350 families benefited from the drive. And the firefighters no longer deliver to homes from a fire truck. Donations are now distributed from Kellogg Middle School.

In the years since the drive began, the fire department has continued its toy drive for young children, and the PTA council has organized the food drive and the new teen gift drive, Mounsey said.

While many fire departments collect toys to donate, Mounsey said the Shoreline firefighters wanted to keep their donations local.

“We can help our citizens right here in Shoreline,” he said.

Sarah DuCette, who chairs the holiday food drive for the council, became involved several years ago, she said.

Schools within the district organize their own canned food drive each year through PTA, DuCette said, and those donations are all delivered to Kellogg Middle School the day before distribution so that they can be sorted and boxed, according to family size.

Each family who benefits from the drive is referred to DuCette by their school’s nurse or family advocate, she said.

The families receive a box of food, then make their way to the library of Kellogg, which houses toys for children ages birth through 11 years old.

Parents of teen-agers visit the teen gift room, which began six years ago and started receiving more generous donations the past couple of years.

The teen gift drive is organized by Andy Denney, the PTA council’s chair for the teen drive.

“This year the council gave us a very large donation of $3,000,” Denney said. With this money, and additional donations that came through, Denney was able to provide each teen with multiple gifts. In the past, each child received only one.

Years ago, Denney’s family and others involved began to notice that older children were being left out of the drive, although many of these teens work hard to help their families.

“There was a piece missing and it was the teen-agers,” Denney said they realized.

Now the teen gift drive receives monetary donations, and Denney purchases age-appropriate gifts.

Mounsey said volunteers from the fire department gather at Fred Meyer the Saturday after Thanksgiving to collect monetary and gift donations for the children’s toy drive.

He said food and gift donations were down a bit this year, but “we do what we can with what we’ve got.

“Nobody’ll go home empty-handed, that’s for sure,” he said.

Denney said she thinks of this drive as a community undertaking, with the schools, fire department and local businesses joining together to make it work.

“I really feel all the pieces come together,” Denney said.

And because it’s local, Denney said students understand the value of donating more.

“The kids could bring in a can to our schools and understand that it’s helping someone in the community,” she said. “I think that’s what made it such a strong program.”

Now that the distribution has taken place, families in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park can begin to enjoy the holidays, and that includes families who received donations as well as families who donated their time and effort.

Denney said her family puts up its Christmas tree after the drive, and her daughters know that the drive kick starts their holidays.

“It makes us really remember what the holidays are about.”