To all you cynics out there: the every man for himself mentality you expect from people wrapped up in a dismal economy so far has been overshadowed by a united effort to help those in our communities less fortunate.
Apple Cup Saturday, 7:30 a.m.
The sun was still rising when the doors at Mill Creek’s Advent Lutheran Church opened to a crowd of some 70 people wanting to help bag and deliver Thanksgiving donations to 200 Snohomish County families. By 8:30 a.m. the line of volunteers — parishioners and otherwise — wrapped three times around the church’s community room and connecting hallway.
“We are all feeling the pain of what’s happening with the economy,” Advent parishioner Walter Liebetrau said. “I usually deliver donations from the church to the food bank once a month, but in just this month I’ve been there three times. You don’t need dramatic news footage to convince people of the need out there; this is so much part of everyone’s lives right now.”
While unemployment rises daily, so too does the number of people turning to local food banks for help.
An estimated 1,700 families are depending on the Everett Food Bank this year to put Thanksgiving dinner on their tables, according to projections from Volunteers of America, the organization that operates the food bank.
Rising to the challenge
As word spreads about the growing demand for service, people are rising to the occasion, volunteering time and money to help fill the need.
“We really appreciate the community. Even though we’re going through such an economic struggle, when the community hears we need help, they’re just right behind us,” Lynnwood Food Bank Director Peg Amarok said. “We just can’t thank the public enough.”
Giving for some people has been influenced by what they’ve seen on television or read in the newspapers, while other people are driven by more personal motivations, having been on the receiving end of food drives and the like.
Jeannine Dagget remembers well how it felt on Thanksgiving and Christmas to receive packages of food and other items that her family couldn’t afford when she was growing up.
“Back then I was a teenager, besides being a little mortified that I was one of ‘those kids,’ I never knew who to thank,” she said. “It feels so good now to be able to give back, having been on the receiving end.”
People are more aware of the need now because of all of the attention that’s been devoted to the economy, but even in good times there are hundreds of families in the community that can’t afford even the most basic essentials, said Dagget, a Snohomish resident and parishioner at Advent Lutheran.
“It’s hidden, but even people in affluent places like Mill Creek go to bed hungry,” she added.
Advent Lutheran has historically conducted its holiday food drive just before Christmas.
But pleas for help this year from local charity groups concerning the staggering need throughout Snohomish County communities prompted church members for the first time ever to organize a Thanksgiving food drive.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people turn out in all of the years I’ve been a part of this,” Liebetrau said. “It really speaks to good in people. I tell them there’s no better feeling in the world than you get delivering these donations — to see the faces of the people you’re helping. One year, a woman had baked cookies and she insisted that I eat them and even though I wanted the children to have them all she was so pleased, so touched, to be able to share something with me.”
It’s better to give
People chatted in line — drinking coffee, eating doughnuts — while they gathered donations from several stations and stuffed them in the bags for delivery later that day. Even small children helped out as best they could.
“It feels pretty good to know you’re helping someone have a happy holiday,” 8-year-old Cheyenne Griswold said. “I think it definitely feels better to give than to receive.”
Enterprise editor Oscar Halpert contributed to this story.
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