Christmas shopping success

To the Editor:

“Kid’s Shopping” at its new home, the Weston County Senior Citizens Center, was a great success. This is due to this great giving community! I want to thank the community for all of the donations and so many volunteers. This  event takes so many people to make it a success, and this community went over the top as usual to provide everything needed to keep this event going.

The community needs to know the history of this wonderful event. In 2010, Norma Lease and Elaine Wilcomb wanted to provide an event that kids could be involved in to understand the giving of Christmas. They heard about an event where people provided things so the kids could shop. Elaine and Norma took this idea and adapted it to fit First United Methodist Church in Newcastle. The church had the New 2 You store, so it was decided that the donated gently used items would be a great way for the kids to provide gifts to parents and grandparents. Not only did the kids get to choose presents, these presents were wrapped so the child could surprise parents or grandparents on Christmas Day. Through the last 13 years the community donated items and volunteered time to provide this event. Many of the Newcastle High School and Newcastle Middle School students volunteered as well.

At the end of 2023, it was decided that the Sunday School rooms were needed so the New 2 You store had to move out of the church. Since we had nowhere to go, we shut down and the items we had stored were distributed all over. We asked all over town for some organization to take the event over. The senior center administrators did step forward and said they would house the donated items, but they did not have the manpower to run the event.

The News Letter Journal wrote an article asking for a new director that would organize the event, and an angel stepped forward in the person of Jewel Parrish. She took this project on with enthusiasm. Ads ran in all media avenues, asking for people to start donating items, since we had to almost start from scratch. The donations poured in and there were so many wonderful items for the kids to choose from!  When Jewel asked for volunteers to wrap presents and students to be elves to help the little ones to shop, the community once again was there.

I am so thankful that Jewel has taken this over, and that people are willing to volunteer so that this wonderful event did not die.

Thanks to all involved and those that brought shoppers.