To the editor:
Once again, the Wintersville Good Neighbors 2023 Christmas Program was a great success due to the help we have from the local churches, schools, businesses, civic clubs, social clubs and many private citizens who volunteer to help.
In 1959, Ruth Cunningham organized a group of teachers at Wintersville Elementary School to help five little girls who were in need of clothing. In 2023, our organization was able to held 70 families with 148 children have a very merry Christmas with food, gifts and store cards.
Our special thanks to Wintersville Methodist Church, which for the last 31 years has allowed us to use their wonderful facility for collecting, sorting, packing and distributing the food and gifts to the many families.
As always, our forever faithful toy coordinator, Kitty Ferguson, spent weeks of countless hours, directing the organizing, sorting and wrapping of all of the toys and gifts for the children
A very special thanks to the students at Cross Creek Elementary School, who collected hundreds of canned goods, brought them to the church, sorted them and placed them on the appropriate tables. We also were blessed with a large donation from the Cross Creek Elementary PTO.
Linda and I also say thanks to the students from the Jefferson County Christian School and the Wintersville Methodist Youth Group who, along with volunteers from the community, helped to wrap all of the donated toys.
Thanks to Deborah Oberman and the Marine Corps Toys for Tots program for donating a large assortment of beautiful new toys. Thanks, also, to Don Roe and the Smithfield Food Pantry, and to Ken Cornish, for organizing the delivery to the shut-ins and the elderly. A great thank you goes to all of the young men who spent the day carrying out and loading the many boxes into the cars of the families.
Thanks to the large group from the Word of Life Fellowship, along with the other volunteers, who came out on Friday night to pack all of the boxes. Thanks to the businesses in Wintersville -- Kroger, Big Lots and Dollar General -- that allowed us to place our toy drop-off boxes in their stores.
We would like to recognize those who gave large monetary, toy and gift donations: Wintersville Methodist Church, Word of Life Fellowship, Wintersville Methodist Modern Eve, Starkdale Presbyterian Church Women, Secret Santa, ADJ Sorority, Academy of Tae Kwon Do, GF/WC Wintersville Womens Club, Mary Kay Schuetz, Tom and Lori Galbreath, Wintersville Methodist Youth Group and Mary Beth Allen.
God bless.
Jerry E. Boyd
Wintersville Good Neighbors