Generous of Spirit
By Ray Feerick
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matt. 25: 35–36) Last spring, fifth and sixth graders collected school supplies for Captain Andrew Lederer ’87, an alumnus serving in the United States Marine Corps in Iraq. His assignment was to renovate and refurbish sixty schools and clinics in the war torn country. In a visit to the school this winter Lederer thanked the boys for their help, and for their prayers and letters. “We appreciate your prayers and well-wishes very much; it means a lot for us to know that people at home support us,” he told a group of eighth graders. Each year after Christmas fifth and sixth graders, led by Student Council Moderator Tom McLellan, raise funds in a series of basketball shootouts for St. Aloysius School in Harlem, the Bonaventure Indian Mission and School in New Mexico, and the ALS Foundation, in commemoration of deceased parent Bruce Hackett. In preparation for Confirmation, our Sixth Grade often funds Heifer International through a series of cake sales and the like. The Heifer Project has helped millions of impoverished families worldwide become more self-reliant through the gift of livestock and training in animal husbandry. Over the years, some events have come and gone, and new ones are regularly invented to meet new needs. For eleven years in the eighties and nineties Saint David’s participated in the Central Park Conservancy’s “You Gotta Have Park” weekend. The boys from various grades first manned a booth at the transverse road at Ninety-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. They were so successful at raising funds and public consciousness of the vital importance of the park that, when the multimillion-dollar restoration of the Bethesda Terrace was completed, Saint David’s was rewarded with that prime location for its booth. With the park walkways recently resplendent with the festive Gates exhibition, alumni can be proud of our part in the transformation of Central Park. More recent charitable “inventions” have included the Parents Association candy collections for children at St. Vincent’s Hospital and their efforts to fulfill the wishes of letter writers to Santa Claus.
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aint David’s has a long history of tending to those in need, the members of our worldwide family. Often, over the school’s fifty-four-year history, our response has matched Jesus’ teaching that we share our material wealth with others near and far. However, as essential as our material help is to our fellow men and women, the school also seeks to promote a generosity of spirit, by encouraging personal contacts between those giving and those receiving. Toward this end, we provide students with a number of opportunities for community service and volunteering, several of which are described below. The beginnings of our philanthropic efforts, as of all good things, are in the Lower School. Youngsters contribute hats and mittens at Christmas to Graham-Windham Children’s Services and design holiday cards for the clients of God’s Love We Deliver. Year round, leftovers from school lunches are picked up weekly by City Harvest, and the younger boys focus on not wasting food. Perhaps the oldest of the school’s charities is the Thanksgiving Food Drive, a school-wide endeavor in which all grades contribute canned goods and other groceries. In recent years, Eighth Grade teacher Tom Ryan, who coordinates the effort, has added the sale of pies to help raise money to purchase turkeys. Fifty turkeys, fifty pounds of breakfast sausage and ham steaks, and sixty boxes of groceries went to each of this past year’s two recipients: Incarnation Parish in Washington Heights and Bethel Gospel Assembly Church on 120th Street. Our yearly help to Incarnation dates to 1967 when Monsignor Tom Leonard became our first chaplain. Bethel Gospel Assembly Church received food through the good offices of William Best, a member of our maintenance staff.
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