Giving to the needy is an area tradition

Through more than 50 years of The Spokesman-Review Christmas Fund, the donations of generous readers have touched thousands of lives. The charity provided gifts and Christmas goodies to jail inmates, homeless men at the Mission Hall and patients at the Edgewood Sanitarium in 1946.

Before the fund evolved into serving poor families, donations sometimes went to military men. In 1949, Christmas Fund donations were sent to the families and dependents of 18 airmen killed when two B-29s stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base crashed after colliding over Stockton, Calif.

In mid-November this year, one of those dependents, Gerry (Fernandez) Faraj, contacted The Spokesman-Review. She had found a letter sent to her mother, Albertine Fernandez, from Col. Clifford H. Rees. A check for $552.12 accompanied the letter, which explained that The Spokesman-Review Christmas charity had selected the families and dependents of the dead airmen and officers as recipients of that year’s funds.

“I found the letter in a photo album my mother gave me that had all of the newspaper clippings from the crash,” said Faraj, whose father, Isaac Fernandez, died when his B-29 went down during a mock bombing run.

Faraj was only 9 months old when her father, a bombardier, died that November. Within a month of her father’s death, her grandfather also died, of a heart attack. The donation came right as the family really needed it.

“I sent the letter to the newspaper as a thank you to the Spokane community. The support of the community during that awful time meant a lot to my mother,” Faraj said in a phone interview from her home in Colorado.

“The deep feeling expressed by the citizenry at the time of the crash of two B-29s from this base aided the Spokesman-Review in selecting the families and dependents of the airmen and officers who died in that crash as recipients of this year’s endeavor,” wrote Rees in his letter to Fernandez. He wrote that the check was “tangible evidence of the complete sympathy and generous unselfishness of the people of Spokane and the Inland Empire.”

That year was an exception in terms of help going toward people involved in a tragic event rather than in dire financial circumstance. In the years after that tragedy, the funds have gone toward making Christmas brighter for the needy in the community, characterized by the newspaper in the 1950s as “skid row men,” or “fatherless families,” or “catastrophic victims’ families.”

Hams, turkeys, a chicken or roast beef were given out until the number of needy made that too difficult. Then the charity began distributing coupons or vouchers for area grocery stores. In 1960, apples were donated to the fund and those were distributed along with toys. In 1970, shoes, boots and staple foods were also distributed, and Christmas dinners served to homeless men were paid for by the fund.

In 1981, Christmas trees were donated to the fund and distributed to needy families. In 1985, someone donated $189 in state lottery tickets to the Christmas Fund, but they yielded just $63.

The fund no longer accepts donations of food or toys or other consumer goods because the donations need to be distributed among more than 33,000 people. Instead, thanks to a partnership with Volunteers of America, Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army, the Christmas Bureau provides a toy each year for about 16,000 children. Monetary donations from generous readers buy those toys and will be used to reimburse area supermarkets for more than $250,000 in food vouchers also given to recipients.

Christmas Fund donations, which are beginning to trickle in, totaled $1,540 in Monday’s tally, bringing this year’s fund to $10,217.56. The goal is $500,000, the amount that organizers expect will be needed to buy toys and food vouchers to provide Christmas for thousands of needy families.

Donations of all amounts are welcome. Time is short and the need is great; the Christmas Bureau opens in less than a week. The newspaper has arranged for a specific post office box for the fund, so donations should be sent to the Christmas Fund at P.O. Box 516, rather than P.O. Box 2160, as listed before. Donations already sent to the old post office box will be forwarded to the fund.

Following are the donations received for Monday’s tally, and the donors:

Louis Franks, of Spokane Valley, donated $300 in memory of his late wife Vita Franks, and dear friends Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Burnside. The Southside Newcomers, of Spokane, gave $200, as did Karen and Jim Woodworth, of Spokane.

William and Deborah Pierce, of Spokane, gave $150. James Spencer, of Spokane, donated $130.

Michael, Emma and Brent Shaffer, of Spokane, donated $120.

Chris and Karen Tollackson donated $100, as did Roberta Forsberg, and an anonymous donor, all of Spokane.

Soroptimist International of Spokane sent $50, as did Elizabeth Tobin, also of Spokane.

An anonymous donor, of Otis Orchards, gave $40.

The following donations were included in the total of Saturday’s tally but not reported in the list: The Spokesman-Review Features Department July Freebie Sale donated $1,896.25 and the Inland Empire Chapter of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 17 donated $80.