Free Skating, Gifts & Fun: Voice Of The Township
The Wayne Township Trustee Office is celebrating this holiday season in our usual fashion with a few new highlights this year.
On December 19, we handed out over 250 meat items at our annual Ham and Turkey Giveaway. We also supplied 50 families of students attending Irwin and Bloomingdale Elementary Schools with turkeys. This is the first time for the student gifts and the fifth year for the drive-thru/walk-up event. Because of the several construction projects going on around our office we moved that event to a city parking lot near Lawton Park.
And on Saturday, December 21 we will be hosting another of our Holiday Skating Parties. This event, which started under the former trustee Richard Stevenson at the Waynedale Roller Dome over ten years ago, is a popular party for adults and children with free skating, skate rental, food, drink, prizes and gifts. Come and join us at Bell’s Skating Rink at 7009 IN-930 New Haven on Saturday from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
The week of December 8 we wrapped up our Christmas Bureau gift deliveries—another project we have been doing for many years. Starting in the fall, workers begin identifying qualifying families to receive gifts purchased and prepared for giving by generous donors. This project is organized through the Allen County Christmas Bureau. They collect the gifts, and the township rents a truck to pick them up and then deliver them to the clients’ homes. Our whole staff gets involved, and everyone who does gets a warm heart seeing the appreciation of the recipient families.
This year, one of our staff members surprised Patsy Brewer, our Clothing Emporium maven, with a donation of one hundred warm winter hats. Deshawndra Coker crocheted each hat with various colored yarns she had purchased over the year. Deshawndra is a member of our Active Relations: Motivation and Morale, or ARMM Committee, and that group had been looking for some new ideas to increase morale while sticking with our community-service mission here at the township. Deshawndra, who loves to crochet as well as helping people, came up with this idea.
Deshawndra learned to crochet when she was involved in a project through Love Church of crocheting plastic grocery sacks into ground mats that could be used by displaced people sleeping outside. She then transferred that knowledge into making hats and other personal items. When she came up with the project to make one hundred hats to give away over the holiday season, she decided to purchase a machine that could crochet the hats faster. The Addi Machine allowed her to make a hat in under an hour—that is before the final decorations are added. “Even though it’s a machine it still requires your total attention and a lot of physical energy. You have to keep a good posture in your back and arms whether you hand-crochet or do it on a machine.”
We are so grateful for this donation and for all of the spirit of giving that our staff demonstrates during the holidays and throughout the year. We wish you a happy holiday season and hope to see you at the skating party.
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