The Huntley Farmside

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m     m     Farmside
Thursday November 23, 2000
Volume 40 No. 45
Your hometown newspaper
© 2000 Press-Republican Newspapers
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Rusty Lyons (above) of the Pioneer Center takes charge of wrapping Chicago Blaclchawl<s wear. Photo below: Members of Daisy Troop Daisy Troop 750 (leaders) Debbie Antczak, Shari Thomnn and Sally Dill and members Amy Antczak, Stephanie Bax, Marie Behnke, Alexis Dill, Kelly Dill, Carrie Francis,Alexandra Gotkowski, Morgan Mikulay,Alex McDaniel and Jessie Thomm bring food, toiletries and paper goods collected at Leggee Elementary School to the Grafton Township Food Pantry last week.Troop member Lorin Gorecki is not pictured.
Morning Star Ministries members organize before beginning holiday food basket building.
Benevolent bounties
by Sheri Battles
Correspondent
Pantry fits as a name for the small kitchenette-like room where food for the needy is stored in the Grafton Township office. The brightly-lit room resembles a large closet at best. Yet, every conceivable space in this tiny room, from the white-wire shelves to the cabinets, teems with boxes of pasta, canned goods, powdered baby formula and more.
According to Grafton Township Supervisor Mildred Ruth,the pantry helps approximately 65 clients a month, 29 of whom are families with chil¬ dren. She described the majority of people who go to the food pantry as hardworking people who run into trouble when they buy a home.
"It's not that they're not working. They've got money coming in, but they fall behind," she explained.
Ruth emphasized that the purpose of the pantry isn't charity, but simply helping people with the necessities of life so they can get back on their feet again. She praised the generosity of the people of Grafton Township and commented that, unlike other pantries, Grafton Township's pantry never needs to ask for donations because of the support of its citizens.
"Grafton Township is very generous...very,very generous. All the groups donate...every church donates,individuals [and] businesses [donate],"Ruth said.
Two groups in Huntley donating again this year are the Lion's Club and the American Legion. Both orga¬ nizations provide turkeys for the baskets the pantry fills every year in an effort to give folks in need the tra¬ ditional holiday feasts they could not otherwise afford. The Lion's Club donates 25 turkeys for Thanksgiving and the American Legion donates 20 to 25 turkeys for Christmas.
According to Norm Brettschieder, the majority of the money to buy the turkeys comes from both the pancake breakfast the Lion's Club holds in November and the steak-fry they hold in February. The American Legion's Bob Zirk stated that the proceeds from their annual feather party have gone toward the purchase of the Christmas turkeys for at least the last ten years.
The Cub Scouts support the efforts of the food pantry throughout the year. Pack 167 Cub Master, Mark Swiatly, asked every scout to bring a canned good to their monthly meetings.
"They end up collecting about 50 or 60 items at each meeting," he said.
These donations are separate from the approxi¬ mately 80 boxes of food they collect every March dur¬ ing their food drive, he explained.
In addition, monetary donations are collected at the November meeting, which scouts and their fami¬ lies attend. Swiatly said the pack usually collects $250 to $300, and they use this rnoney to adopt one of
See Bounty page 4