OLEAN — One of the bright spots over the holiday season for Gail Cross was when she and other volunteers at Bethany Lutheran Church tallied up the homemade cookies donated to those in need.
That tally stood at more than 1,000 dozen cookies — the delicious morsels helping to sweeten the holidays for those who visited the Olean Food Pantry during the Christmas season.
Cross, an organizer of the 14th annual effort at the church, said the cookies donated this year were the most ever given — almost doubled from previous years.
“Someone asked us what our goal was, but we never have a goal” for donated cookies, Cross said. “We like to have enough to give to everybody and we always hope we do that. But my fear this year was that we wouldn’t have enough people to bake for us because of the economy.”
Adding to the concern, local schools that had donated homemade cookies in the past didn’t participate this year as students were learning remotely due to the pandemic.
Despite her earlier fears, Cross soon found out that she didn’t have to worry.
“Honest to goodness, they came out of the woodwork,” Cross said of the amateur bakers. “People I’ve never heard of before saw the articles in the (Times Herald) or through word of mouth and they baked.”
Some donated a second and third time to the cause, and one woman donated 195 dozen cookies. Varieties included chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, gingerbread men and cut-out cookies, among others.
“Three of the people who are volunteers at the food pantry came over and helped us bag cookies on Sundays because they knew we needed help,” she continued. “They also brought baked goods with them when they did come.”
She said others showed up to help bag the cookies when they heard of the amount of work that needed done.
“I can’t express exactly how I feel, I was overwhelmed,” Cross added.
In all, there were at least 70 people and several groups that helped with cookie baking, in addition to those who helped pack them.
Also helping with the effort was Ried’s Food Barn in Olean which donated a gift card for the purchase of more supplies to bake additional cookies, if needed. In addition, the Lutheran Insurance group Thrivent donated seed money to purchase supplies for the project, and a husband and wife donated $100 to help.
“We had to buy bags and gloves and other supplies like that to help with the process,” she explained. The project was finished on Dec. 28 when the last bags of cookies were delivered to the food pantry.
“The community came together at a time when I thought we wouldn’t do nearly what we normally do,” she stated, noting the typical year had collected 400 dozen up to the previously top year of 575 dozen.
“We did better than we ever, ever thought,” she remarked.
Cross said the best part of the project was that anyone who showed up at the pantry in need of food, no matter how many times, was given cookies to take home.
“Everybody was so happy, the people who received them were absolutely grateful,” she concluded. “And the children were munching on them while they were waiting in line.”
January 08, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Thousands of cookies donated to food pantry | Olean - Olean Times Herald
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