Longtime volunteers makes Good Cheer a success

Twelve inches of snow wasn’t going to prevent a needy family from getting food for the holidays.

When nearly a foot of snow slowed the delivery of the Good Cheer Fund baskets to a crawl in 2004, volunteers had trouble bringing food to the hungry in the unplowed rural parts of the county. One driveway proved nearly impassable.

But the Barr family — Annette and Vince, and their children Andrew, Alyssa and AJ — had a heavy-duty pickup truck. They were not going to allow the weather to slow them down. Working methodically, they braved the snowy roads to get the basket delivered.

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“Nobody else could get it, and they really wanted to make sure this basket got delivered. Dad said we’d try to take the truck up there, and we did,” Alyssa Barr said.

Just like Christmas trees and Santa Claus, volunteering for the Good Cheer Fund is ingrained in the holiday season for the Barrs and many other families, businesses and organizations in Johnson County.

That community is essential in ensuring the drive continues. Donations of both money and food are the foundation of the fund, but volunteer effort is the engine that drives it, chairman Jacob Sappenfield said.

Individual families such as the Barrs have made the Good Cheer Fund an integral part of their holidays, and businesses, clubs and other organizations place an emphasis on helping in very specific ways throughout the month of December.

“Our partners understand the importance of taking care of our neighbors,” Sappenfield said. “All of these organizations have a vested interest in Johnson County. Our community is filled with businesses and families who have high character and are genuinely good loving people. They truly get more from giving than receiving.”

Around the warehouses and hallways of Johnson County REMC, everyone knows that early December means the start of Good Cheer season. Employees help clean out the main storage area at the Franklin-based facility, where all of the Good Cheer baskets will be assembled. They haul the hundreds of baskets out of their storage barn that will be distributed to schools throughout the county for students to donate canned and boxed foods.

Most of all, people start planning on their annual tradition of volunteering to deliver, said Ken Dickey, head of REMC’s Good Cheer Fund participation.

“A lot of people started doing it to get their families involved,” Dickey said. “It’s giving back. You get to see, when you go out and deliver, you see what other people don’t have. It’s a humbling feeling knowing that you can help.”

REMC is a vital partner in Good Cheer, Sappenfield said. Since 1992, the company has offered its facility as the staging area for the delivery. At the same time, dozens of employees give their time to do everything from assembling the food baskets to passing them out.

“A lot of it is community involvement. The employees here want to get involved in the community, and this is one way they can do it,” Dickey said. “We have one guy here whose family has done Good Cheer for so long, even though their kids are in college, this is part of their tradition. They just keep doing it.”

The Good Cheer Fund is the annual charity drive raising money and food to help the hungry during the holiday season. The fund was founded in 1921 by Austin Flinn, a local funeral home owner, and the Franklin Evening Star. That first year, the community helped feed 110 families.

The charity drive has endured every year since.

Residents donate money to the cause, oftentimes in memory or honor of a loved one, and those donations are collected by and published in the Daily Journal.

The money is then used to buy fresh food, such as produce, potatoes, meat, cheese and milk.

One of the most vital collaborators to the delivery has been the JayC grocery store in Edinburgh, Sappenfield said. Good Cheer organizers purchase more than $36,000 worth of food at the store each year, buying the chickens, milk, eggs and other perishable goods that make up the baskets.

Officials at JayC work with Sappenfield to ensure that they’re getting the most food for their money. They also not only deliver all of that food to Franklin for the baskets to be assembled, but make special deliveries to Edinburgh and Greenwood so organizers there can put together baskets as well, Sappenfield said.

On top of the fresh food, children throughout the county collect nonperishable items to ensure people have three or four days worth of food at Christmastime. Schools help provide nearly 40,000 cans of food for the baskets, making their contributions indispensable, Sappenfield said.

“Its refreshing to know that our community is mostly filled with giving people who want the best for their neighbors,” he said.

Finally, it’s time to put together baskets and deliver the food to the needy. Volunteers, many of which have participated in Good Cheer for generations, are given addresses and names, and load up their trucks and cars with food.

A majority of the food is distributed on the morning of Christmas Eve, though Greenwood’s Fraternal Order of Police takes baskets to homes in the northern part of the county the Saturday before Christmas.

On the morning of Dec. 24, more than 30 members of the Indian Creek High School FFA will gather about 7 a.m. to have breakfast together before heading out to start their deliveries. After filling up on eggs, sausage, bacon and hash browns, they break off into groups to pick up the baskets they’ve been assigned.

Each group gets two or three baskets to deliver to households within the Indian Creek school district.

“All families have Christmas traditions, and these kids have developed the tradition of delivering baskets as part of their Christmas,” Dunn said.

The FFA has been active with the Good Cheer Fund for many years, advisor and agriculture teacher Joseph Dunn said. The organization donates and cooks pork chops for the annual Jim Rhoades Memorial Hog Roast, which is a primary fundraiser for the fund.

Contributing to the Good Cheer Fund gets to the roots of FFA’s agricultural mission.

“There is nothing that’s more community-driven and community-based than agriculture. One of the things that FFA really promotes is servant leadership,” Dunn said. “Whenever we have an opportunity to do a community service project, especially one that is as impactful as the Good Cheer baskets, we want to keep doing that.”

Then one of the highlights of the year for the group is getting to deliver baskets, Dunn said.

“The number of kids who take part grows every year. They really enjoy the camaraderie, the atmosphere. They feel a sense of accomplishment when they do it,” he said. “It’s really eye-opening for kids to see some of the simple things they take for granted on a regular basis is not available for everybody.”

The Barrs are lifelong Johnson County residents. Vince Barr has lived all but two years of his life in Union Township. Annette Barr is the Union Township trustee. They all feel a close bond to the county, which gives helping with Good Cheer a more personal connection.

“We look forward to it every year. It’s something that I rearrange my work schedule with every year, because it means something to me,” Andrew Barr said. “It’s something I want to pass on to my daughters too.”

The Barrs started volunteering for the Good Cheer fund more than 20 years ago, when their children were still small. They were active in sports throughout Franklin, and that connection introduced them to opportunities to serve.

They could also use it as a way to teach a lesson about gratitude and thankfulness.

“They were probably griping about wanting something or needing something, and I thought, well, let’s go see some folks who might not be as fortunate as us,” Vince Barr said.

The Johnson County Young Farmers, a group that supports people ages 18 to 35 with an interest in agriculture, has been helping with the basket delivery for at least the past seven years. The organization is a program of the Johnson County Farm Bureau, whose officials felt that delivering would be a family-friendly activity for all of its members.

“It’s a good avenue for young farmers to participate in, just because of the family aspect of it and serving that gets everyone involved,” said Daven Lawalin, coordinator for Johnson County Young Farmers.

Young Farmers has also worked with Good Cheer Fund organizers to buy a certain food item, such as potatoes or corn meal mix, to be included in all of the baskets. More than 40 people typically sign up to be part of the delivery activities.

For the past two years, the group has been responsible for delivering to the same area — the Country View Estates community in Franklin. They drive over together, then split up to drop off baskets to the families who need them.

“It’s really nice getting to meet these families. As a person, you feel bad. It can be a little embarrassing sometimes for the families, you can tell. So the biggest thing is just getting a smile and a thank you. Sometimes they invite you in for a few minutes,” Lawalin said. “It’s a neat experience.”

For the Barrs, Good Cheer has become a yearly part of Christmas, and it’s an all-day commitment. They are up before 5 a.m. and meet up with other longtime volunteers for breakfast before heading to REMC to pick up baskets.

They have told organizers they’ll stay until all of the baskets are delivered and any problems that arise during the day are wrinkled out. If they run out of supplies for certain baskets, the Barrs will run to the grocery store for a few extra hams or other items.

Often, they don’t get back home on Christmas Eve until late afternoon.

“We wait to see what they need and what’s short, and then he goes and fills it up,” Annette Barr said. “It’s something we look forward to, because it is being part of the community and helping the community.”

They used to all go out together, but now that the kids are grown, they each have their own route to deliver.

Delivering baskets has provided each member of the family with experiences that have stayed with them. AJ Barr remembers one year when they took a basket to an elderly woman. Her heat was barely working, and she was all alone.

“She was adamant that we stay and talk for a while. We stayed for probably a half-hour, sat down and had some coffee with her. That’s what makes it important to me,” AJ Barr said.

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What: Good Cheer Fund, an annual effort to pass out holiday food baskets to the needy throughout Johnson County. Baskets include a mix of canned foods and fresh items, such as a ham or chicken, eggs, milk and cheese.

How many: About 800 baskets

Distribution: 360 baskets will go to the Franklin, Trafalgar and Bargersville areas; 240 will go to Greenwood and the northern part of the county; and 200 will go to the Edinburgh area.

How to apply: Applications, both in Spanish and English, can be found in the Daily Journal today and on Dec. 1. To be considered for a basket, applications must be received by Dec. 7. For more information, call 317-777-1159.

How to give: Monetary donations will be accepted until the end of December. Donations can be mailed to the Daily Journal, P.O. Box 699, Franklin, IN 46131, or dropped off at the Daily Journal at 30 S. Water St., Second floor, Suite A, in Franklin.

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