The Auxiliary of the American Legion Post 347 started a new holiday tradition out of a longstanding Post tradition and the result is 25 more families receiving food to make Christmas dinner. Cathy Trout, chair of the Auxiliary children and youth services committee worked with Carol Pirone-Udell, chair of the Auxiliary community services committee, to launch this program.
Post 347 for many years has given food to families during the holiday season for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. Recently the Post switched to giving gift cards and although the Auxiliary continues to support this endeavor, they missed the personal touch of collecting food to make holiday baskets.
This year they decided to make food baskets and contacted Villages Elementary of Lady lake for the names of families in need. The school supplied a list of 25 families and the Auxiliary set about collecting and purchasing food. The baskets the families will receive includes a turkey, stuffing mix, vegetables and so on to make Christmas dinner. Their basket will include other staples such as tuna, peanut butter and macaroni and cheese to help the family while the children are out of school.
Auxiliary president Mary LaNoce was on hand to help fill the baskets.
”It is my privilege to serve this community as president,” said LaNoce. “I give all the credit to may chairs and their committees.”
The Auxiliary for Post 347 is the second largest in Florida. Post 347 is Pirone-Udell’s home unit, and she also serves as sixth district president. Clearly the project volunteers putting together the baskets had done this before; they had the operation down to a science. Boxes on tables marked the number in the families. Women with carts put food in the box based on the number. Turkeys were arriving a little later to still be frozen when the families picked them up.
“We just want to give back,” said Pirone-Udell. “We are happy we can make a difference for these families.”