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Gleaners Dispatch Gazette

Last week was Thanksgiving and the food donated by our good and loyal benefactors went to good use in helping underpaid and some elderly local folks enjoy a brighter holiday.

Two days later in keeping with the Gleaners Dispatch tradition, our family of volunteers was invited to a Gleaners appreciation dinner and evening of Karaoke graciously provided by Tony Creppel, who said “I really am impressed with what Gleaners does all year round and I just want to donate an evening of entertainment to this group.”

This year’s event was held at the Oak Hill Church of the Nazarene on Old Middleburg Road north.

Tony owns Delaine & Tony Entertainment and Karaoke on Hammond Blvd.
“The attendees very much appreciated Tony’s time and gracious donation of some fine music to entertain the crowd and even allow them to participate,” said Dave Fountain, CEO and founder of Gleaners, “even more amazing was to find so many talented singers in our midst; our volunteers it turns out, are multi-talented, Dave added.

Special thanks to a well-known construction business owner Lee Crowe for providing a wide array of Christian and rock and roll performances enjoyed by all.

Trent Bosley, Daniel Buck, Linda Lee, James Mitchell and Betty Rowland made sure the Turkey and all its fixins’ were right on schedule to feed hungry people. “It is, after all, what we do best,” said Terry Fountain.

Trent and his wife Lisa and Linda Lee recently joined the volunteer force with Gleaners. Linda is a superb outside sales person with experience she now uses to find donors and supporters of the noble cause of feeding hungry souls; spiritually as well as nourishing their bodies. Between Linda and Diane Brink, another newby, they found door prizes for meals and groceries presented to lucky ticket holders.

Just a week earlier, Bent Creek Homeowners Association kindly permitted Gleaners Dispatch to set up a booth at their annual Fall Festival. Gleaners told many residents about the ways we can help hungry folks and asked them to direct the increasing number of desperate Westsiders toward our distribution points.

We want to thank Bent Creek residents for supporting Gleaners with monetary donations, food by the hundreds of pounds left over from the party and even furniture donations from the Deborah and Roland Esque family and lots of clothes and a little girls bicycle from Doug and Sue Ehly.

Dave said this morning all five of our vehicles were loaded to the hilt with donated bread so he was off to find people beyond our scheduled distribution in Callahan at the fair grounds to give away the extra because “It isn’t doing anybody any good if it isn’t on a families bare table.”

This is the first of a weekly update on events at Gleaners. Look for a new post on Monday or Tuesday each week depending upon our schedule and of course…

Feel free to contact me with contributions especially for use in these gas guzzling vans and trucks. We know where the food is, it is getting there that is becoming a challenge. Help me think of ways to “wean” them; if gas hadn’t fallen lower, we would have already parked some of our six trucks. And we know, what goes down will come screaming sky high in a few months -especially speaking fuelishly.