As of April 1, 2025, My Huntley News is no longer publishing new content but remains active for archival use. For those of you with active subscriptions, a prorated reimbursement will be sent to you no later than May 1, 2025. Refunds will be issued to the name and address listed on your subscription. My Huntley News thanks you for your support and readership, and we welcome you to visit White Silo Media's primary publication, My Sun Day News.
Subscribe Subscriber Login Staff/Contact Advertise Submissions Jobs

 

MY HUNTLEY NEWS

THE DOORWAY TO OUR COMMUNITY
 
News Features Sports A&E Columns Hang Your Hat Obituaries Sun City

November 30, 2020

Volunteers Deena Snell and Nancy Bloedorm help load food into the cart during the pantry food giveaway Saturday afternoon.
George Niman
Volunteers Deena Snell and Nancy Bloedorm help load food into the cart during the pantry food giveaway Saturday afternoon.

Features • November 30, 2020

Grafton Food Pantry hosts holiday food drives

By

HUNTLEY – “We had a huge turnout the day of the giveaway,” Harriet Ford said.

Clients drove up to the distribution site at Grafton Food Pantry. Ford, a board member of the Grafton Food Pantry, described the scene for the people that had stepped forward in their lives to give others a wonderful Thanksgiving.  She told of a volunteer greeting the clients as they stayed in their car. From that moment of anticipation of a client family, Ford explained how a volunteer would carefully load a client’s trunk with a turkey and trimmings and the client would drive away.  To see this scene repeated a couple hundred times you might then get a sense of the emotion in Ford’s voice as she credited the Huntley community’s generosity.

“We are blessed with an outpouring of support.  The Sun City community is vital and a significant group of donors for us.”

A similar scenario awaits clients on December 12 at Grafton Food Pantry. Clients will again drive up, show their letter for a Christmas ham and trimmings, and await a volunteer to put the food into their trunk and they’ll drive away from the Pantry knowing the generosity of the Huntley community continues to shine brightly.

While Thanksgiving demand was underestimated, the volunteers came through big time as they will again for Christmas. Ford reflected for a moment on the all-time high demand for Thanksgiving.

“Managers Gloria Newman and Lydia Locke and our tireless volunteers met the challenge and made it a positive experience for all involved,” Ford said. “We’ve revved up some for Christmas, so we’ll have a little more food available for our clients.”

As for volunteers, Ford is quite pleased with the number of volunteers right now for the Christmas ham dinner. However, she’s always interested in more volunteers on a regular basis.

The Thanksgiving Dinner Giveaway this past November 14 might have been a warmup to the Christmas ham dinners giveaway on December 12 between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.  Ford expects her volunteers to hand out 200 holiday ham dinners.  The clients will receive a ham, a box of trimmings including vegetables, a bag of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other side dishes to feed a family of eight.

“If there was ever a year to believe in goodwill toward one another, 2020 has to be one of the major contenders filled with challenges and loss,” Ford said.  “The spirit of giving is alive and well in Sun City, Huntley.”

Just as the turkey for Thanksgiving came from the Northern Illinois Food Bank, the ham is delivered from the same place. “If you were to go to a grocery store, the retail price of a ham might cost $10-to-$12,” Ford said.

While the community has been very generous with the $30 donation to buy a holiday dinner, A Holiday Without Hunger, Ford hopes they’ll get all of their families adopted.

“We are still looking for donors that will adopt a family and go shopping for them. People have received a list about adoptions and they had it ordered from Amazon and had it directly shipped to us,” Ford said. This is part of the Holiday of Hope Adopt A Family.

“They’ll provide hundreds of children and adults going through a rough time with the joy and relief of gifts at the holidays,” according to the website graftonfoodpantry.org/adopt-a-family. Ford says people are still struggling. “Hopefully this will make their holidays brighter.”