EDITORIAL: Community support over holidays
Dec. 2—THUMBS UP to all the events ongoing to help out our friends, family and neighbors in the community over the holidays.
People continue selecting cards from the Angel Tree at the McAlester News-Capital before Tuesday's deadline to return gifts.
The McAlester News-Capital and the McAlester Lions' Club started an Angel Tree three years ago and partnered with Toliver Chevrolet this year to provide even more clothes and toys for children in need during the holidays.
Every angel on the tree at the News-Capital office at 500 S. Second St. in McAlester gets numbered and anyone purchasing gifts for an angel must number the gifts.
Gifts must be new and unwrapped when they are returned by the Dec. 6 deadline.
The annual J. Michael Miller Toy Giveaway is also in full gear — with the McAlester Regional Health Center, the MRHC Foundation and AirCare recently delivering some donations to the event by helicopter at the Southeast Expo Center.
McAlester High School senior Reed Marcum, family members and other volunteers organize the event each year and have said this year will be the biggest one ever.
This year's event set from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Dec. 10 at Ragan Auto, 306 E. Wyandotte Ave.
Reed has helped the community in a number of ways on his way to being inducted to the Oklahoma 4-H Hall of Fame this year.
He started the 501 (c) 3 Hudson Strong Foundation to raise scholarship funds for students planning to enter the medical field as well as for families who are facing or who have faced traumatic situations. He started Foundation in honor of Hudson Campbell, the 2-year-old child who died of pediatric cancer complications in 2018.
The toy giveaway also honors Kenna Faith Mattiado, who died after being born with congenital heart disease; the late McAlester police officer Danny Kelley; Lakewood Christian School teacher Leeann Yandell; and Reed's brother, the late U.S. Army Sgt. Miles Tarron, and Reed's grandmother.
The News-Capital featured a longtime holiday tradition in its latest McAlester Living magazine as E-Angels transitioned into new leadership.
Janet Derichsweiler, who started E-Angels, said she has handed the program over to Shared Blessings, which plans to make it part of its Student Needs program that assists children in Pittsburg County.
E-Angels is short for Email Angels — a networks of individuals, groups, organizations, businesses and churches that helped make sure underserved children had gifts at Christmastime.
In 2020, E-Angels expanded to help meet the needs of underserved students for the entire school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many schools shut down in-person classes. E-Angels also put together cluster bags for children at participating schools, to help make sure they got what they needed during the pandemic.
These are just a few of the great programs and initiatives in our community designed to give our friends, family and neighbors in need a merrier Christmas and happier holidays.
We applaud everyone involved in these charitable programs — and encourage anyone who can to offer some help.
—McAlester News-Capital Editorial Board
