Caring and sharing – Volunteers help make Christmas bright for others

Cars crept bumper to bumper through the Civic Center parking lot Wednesday morning as hundreds of families picked up their Share A Christmas Dinner food boxes.

A majority of the 525 families who received food boxes this year came to the Civic Center distribution site where Southern Standard employees, WCHS Interact Club members and other volunteers established an assembly line to add perishable items to the food boxes.

Most of the other items were already packed by the Interact Club and WCMS?s Youthact Club on Sunday.

?We love to do this,? said Foodland owner and program sponsor Richard McMahan, who pitched in to distribute boxes. ?I love it. The faces in the Interact Club change but their willingness to help others stays the same. We think this program is wonderful and we are thankful to participate.?

It takes the help of many volunteers to make the labor-intensive program work.

?We appreciate the Interact and Youthact clubs and all that they do,? said Standard advertising director Sharon Patrick. ?We also appreciate all the generous people who donated. Because of their donations, we are able to keep this program going.?

Those baskets not picked up at the Civic Center were delivered around the county by Standard employees immediately after the Civic Center distribution.

According to Patrick, the program will be offered again next year.