Scott Clark rallies the troops. Photo by Paul Brennan The Troy Armoury was a beehive of activity Friday night as about 160 volunteers packed the Santa Fund baskets.
Scott Clark rallies the troops. Photo by Paul Brennan
The Troy Armoury was a beehive of activity Friday night as about 160 volunteers packed the Santa Fund baskets.
Like precision clock work volunteers circled the stations ensuring each basket was filled with all the trimmings for a special Christmas day, while being serenaded by ‘Guys With No Ties.' Even Santa stopped by the Armoury for a visit as well as to thank the volunteers for taking time out of their busy holiday schedules to help those less fortunate in the community.
For many of the volunteers packing night is a family affair, a social event and a teaching tool.
“It’s a family ritual,” states Rick Pineo of Erma’s Coffee Shop.
“We’re here with everybody to help other people in the community, and teach the kids to help those less fortunate.”
The Stockfish family couldn’t agree more.
“Because we’re going to help who don’t have a lot,” states 6-year-old Madie Stockfish.
“To help others have a Merry Christmas,” adds 9-year-old Alex Stockfish.
Co-Chair of the fund, Scott Clark, who volunteers an enormous amount of his personal time ensuring that the motto of the Santa Fund is carried out, looked on in awe as the baskets came together.
“People really see the spirit of the season when they get involved in this, and I said this year I really made an effort to talk about the delivery day,” he explains
“This is fun, the raising of money and all the great things that we do, all the great Christmas parties, bake sales and kids caroling and all the bottle drives and the packing and everybody is having a great time,”
“But I’ll tell you that the real gift I feel is when you get to deliver a basket to a family and when you’re watching the kids and that excitement.”
“When you deliver the baskets … you are Santa Clause when you arrive and it’s really emotional.”
Clark said he was once again overwhelmed by the generosity of the community.
“God bless my family for letting me do this and allowing me to give back to the community,” he says.
“It’s their donation to the community as well, my time, but at the same time I hope to instill the same values in my two children and so we get them out each year like tonight we’ll get them packing baskets and we’ll go out and deliver a couple of baskets together and spend time as a family, and that’s a blessing to us too.”
Clark says the Santa Fund is the one event that he doesn’t sweat bullets when heading into the homestretch and being tremendously shy of meeting the fund-raising goal.
“This is different than any other event that I’ve ever been involved in,” he explains.
“My first year of being involved with it I had worries that we weren’t going to meet our goal. You get nervous all of those same feelings, now I know that we’ll meet our goal every year.”
I have no doubts, it’s in the hands of God and the community and I literally have no worries and like three days out we’re 50,000 dollars short and I don’t event think about it and it goes over every single year,” he states.
“I can’t explain it and we aren’t making phone calls trying to make people give, it is truly the community coming forward and they just give. And we go over every single year, it’s amazing.”
Clark says any food left over is donated to other charities like the Gathering Place and the Transition House.
“We make sure we spread it through out the community.”
