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Thursday, December 6, 2007
Team effort brings Santa to seniors this year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This Christmas season, some Gwinnett residents are expanding their list to include a group often overlooked in all the holiday merriment — senior citizens living in our community who are alone and financially strapped.
Area merchants — and shoppers throughout the county — are helping us remember these people through our “Be a Santa to a Senior” project.
The project grew from an interest by the Home Instead Senior Care franchisee in Gwinnett to participate in a holiday community service project. (Home Instead Senior Care is a private company that provides nonmedical home care and companionship to senior citizens. The recipients of the program would not be clients of Home Instead Senior Care, but elderly who are identified as being in need.)
The goal of the “Be a Santa to a Senior” program is to provide holiday cheer and gifts to almost 400 seniors who are lonely, financially needy and least likely to receive a present during the holiday season. Shoppers and patrons at participating businesses can take an ornament from one of the display trees at the business and purchase gifts for a senior, based on the ideas listed on the ornament. The gifts are dropped off back at the participating merchants by Dec. 10, after which they will be gathered, wrapped and distributed.
How is this accomplished? Well, it takes the involvement, dedication and hard work of many people — most of whom I don’t know and the majority of whom I will never meet. But a few people are working particularly hard to make “Be a Santa to a Senior” come together.
Our nonprofit agency partner that provides us with the older adults to be the recipients of the gifts is the Gwinnett County Department of Community Services.
Help from area merchants has been essential, and we have been blessed with four who are hosting a Christmas tree at their location: Wal-Mart on Scenic Highway, Belk Department Store in Snellville, Chick-fil-A on Scenic Highway and Macaroni Grill at the Avenue at Webb Gin.
All the presents dropped off at the merchant locations will be retrieved and brought to our office to be logged in and catalogued properly. Guess who does all that running around? Well, every program needs a point person — a “go-to” individual who can get the project off the ground and nurture and care for it through completion. That person is our office manager, Sue Silva, one of those people who actually likes it when things get hectic and crazy, and the more hectic and crazy, the better.
The fifth-grade classes at Pharr Elementary and Grayson Elementary will participate in a holiday wrapping party for all the gifts bought, and Pharr Elementary has graciously offered to host the party. Not only will the children help wrap presents, but they will also get their creative juices flowing by making sure each senior has a handcrafted holiday card to accompany the gifts. Additionally, some community residents as well as some Home Instead caregivers have volunteered their time to help wrap presents.
Finally, we need a whole lot of elves to help deliver the presents. Most of the gifts will be delivered by volunteers with the Meals on Wheels program in Gwinnett County, along with some Home Instead Senior Care personnel.
Just telling you about the scope of this project makes my head spin. And realizing all the people who have so unselfishly given of their time, their money, their goodwill, their store space and their school space is overwhelming. I don’t know where to begin to thank everyone.
Most important, I want to acknowledge every individual who will take the time to select an ornament and shop for someone they don’t even know. Most of you have gone above and beyond in your generosity. I wish I had each of your names so I could personally thank you for your willingness to get involved and go the extra mile. This project has reinvigorated my faith in people and their decision to stop and help a stranger less fortunate during a time of the year when it is most appreciated.
Gerry Serotte and her brother Sam Serotte of Lawrenceville co-own the Snellville office of Home Instead Senior Care, which is in its 10th year of operation. The business assists the elderly with errands and nonmedical home care that allow them to stay at home as they grow older.
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Holiday photos of kids follow definite pattern
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This past Thanksgiving, I was visiting with my parents when I found a box jam-packed with grainy, fading photographs. My dad sat down with me, and we had the best time looking through the pictures, figuring out which woman was my grandmother, which gentleman was my grandfather and, especially, which little boy was my dad.
My dad is 84 years old. I’m no math wizard, but some quick subtraction told me these photos were taken in 1933. Or ’35. Or ’38. The point is: way, way back in the day, photos were taken pretty regularly. Imagine that! Because a search through my mom’s scrapbook will produce an extremely meager stash of her young family’s pictures. Especially when it comes to me, otherwise known as the third-born.
My two older brothers, at 2 and 3 years old, show up in some dandy pics, wearing cowboy suits and boots, pedaling a tricycle. Or in the park, dressed in little jackets with those ear-flap hats on their buzz-cut heads. Then I was delivered, and wham! Welcome to the photographic black hole.
“But what about holiday photos?” you ask. Surely, there’s a precious picture of that only daughter, dressed in red velvet and lace or even footy pajamas. What mother doesn’t have a bounty of black-and-white memories of her little ones, opening presents on Christmas morn, or sitting on Santy’s lap, their tiny eyes all aglow?
Well, OK. There is a holiday photo. I suppose the only reason we have that picture is because my mother didn’t have to take it. There we stand, my two older brothers and I, sort of close, but not really, to the fat, jolly man. We look distinctly uncomfortable. Probably because we had no idea what was going on, being as unfamiliar as we were to the whole picture-taking process.
It’s the only photo I’ve ever seen of me or my brothers with Santa Claus. When I asked my mom about this phenomenon, she claimed nobody took pictures back in the day. When pressed further, she’d say she was too busy raising her children to bother with pictures, especially around the holidays. Like that’s any kind of an excuse.
So I vowed to be the best darn picture taker ever after my first-born arrived. His baby book is crammed with page after page of snapshots, documenting his every move. And Christmas pictures? Too many to count. I’m surprised we didn’t have to take out a loan to pay for all that December adorableness.
When his sister followed a few years later, I clicked away. Her baby book is full, too. Maybe not crammed. Maybe not chronicled month-by-month. More like quarter-by-quarter. But in my defense, she leaped from one milestone to the next, unlike her brother, who crawled at a snail’s pace. Is that the photographer’s fault?
And can you really blame the photographer if at Christmas, a certain little girl had an aversion to sitting on strange men’s laps? There are a few photos of my daughter with Santa, but she’s usually standing to the side of the chair, looking distinctly uncomfortable (like mother, like daughter). So can you blame a parent if those holiday photos weren’t taken at the expensive mall Santa hot spot? I mean, we still had to pay something for the pictures, even if it was a donated can of peas or box of tuna helper.
The third child joined us in 1991, I think it was. And I truly believe that 2008 will be the year I finish his baby book.
But, and this is the most important thing to remember during this holiday season, I do have a picture of my youngest with Santa Claus. There’s a darling Polaroid of him with a teenage Santa taken during a Secret Shopping Day extravaganza. Sure, the photo was free. And maybe I wasn’t exactly there to take the picture. And it’s possible that my child is leaning against the chair because he’s way too big to sit in the scrawny Santa’s lap.
But there’s a definite look of wonder on my son’s face. Maybe the poor kid’s wondering what he’s doing with this fake 14-year-old Santa? And I think I know the answer to that. But first, I’ve got to call my mother. She’s getting an apology for Christmas.
Cathy C. Hall is a mother of three who lives in Lilburn. You can check out her writings at Cathy C.’s Hall of Fame at www.cathychall.blogspot.com.
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$110,000 for a Button!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Being an obscure historical figure has its advantages.
Some folks will pay a fortune to buy the scrap of paper bearing your grocery list or the tissue you wiped your nose with.
Such is the case with Button Gwinnett’s signature.
A recent AJC Gwinnett News story about this county’s namesake and lesser-known signer of the Declaration of Independence prompted some readers to remind us of this fact.
In 2001, Sotheby’s sold a sheet bearing Gwinnett’s signature for $110,000. It fetched more money than a Beatles album signed by all four members of the band.
That’s because documents bearing Gwinnett’s name are quite rare.
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