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closeBasket Brigade helps stave off hard times
Susan Schell
of the Gateway
On the night of Nov. 24, a room at Uptown Gig Harbor will resemble a Santa’s workshop, with volunteers bustling about, making gifts for the needy.
But it won’t be for Christmas. It’ll be for Thanksgiving, and this organization wants to make sure everyone has a happy one.
The Basket Brigade will be creating food baskets and delivering them to people’s doorsteps the next day. They’ll ring a doorbell, then run away.
“It’s not about us saying, ‘Gee aren’t we great guys,’ ” said David Cathers, former president of the Gig Harbor morning Rotary Club who founded the Basket Brigade in 1994. “It’s about helping out someone who’s having a hard time right now. Someone who’s just lost a job, is going through a divorce or has had a death in the family. Someone who’s down right now and can use a hand.”
Cathers said the group receives tips on names and addresses for basket recipients from friends, co-workers, church groups, schools or social organizations.
The names of the families are kept anonymous, even to the volunteers, who simply put the baskets together according to the number of people in the household indicated on the basket.
This year, John Hogan of Uptown Gig Harbor made the building space available between Galaxy Theatres and Lele Restaurant to coordinate the two-day basket-making operation.
“On (Nov. 24), we’ll be setting up the space and turning it into a grocery store,” Cathers said. “We need people to help unload and set up tables, make labels and organize the boxes.
“Some people go on last-minute shopping trips if we need something. It’s a lot of fun. I tell them, ‘How’d you like to go shopping with someone else’s money?’ ”
The atmosphere is busy, but people have a good time and many bring their children to help out.
On Nov. 25, volunteers will load up their cars with baskets. Some volunteers in outlying areas will deliver to houses around the areas they live before they go home.
“A lot of people that help out with the baskets have received baskets themselves, so it’s come full-circle,” Cathers said. “People get together, and they have a kick.”
Tanya English is one of those people. When she and her family first moved to Gig Harbor in 1996, they didn’t expect that particular Thanksgiving to be one of their finest.
“My husband was unemployed and we had five kids,” she said. “There was a food basket on our doorstep, and it was the most wonderful thing. It was like a miracle.”
English didn’t who the good samaritans were until a year later when she read about the Basket Brigade in the newspaper.
“I figured that had to be where it came from, so now the whole family volunteers every year,” English said. “My daughter’s birthday falls on that day, and they all sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”
Cathers recalls an elementary school student who got a grocery store involved when he told the staff what he was shopping for. He ended up coming back with dozens of loaves of day-old bread that the store donated for the project.
“He’ll be another Bill Gates,” Cathers said.
In the past, local restaurants like Starbucks and the Tides Tavern have donated coffee and rolls for the volunteers.
The project — and the need for the baskets — has grown in past years. Last year, the group made 345 to 365 baskets, and it expects the number to be about the same this year.
Cathers said the positive side is that the idea has caught on in surrounding areas, like Seattle.
The group is collecting food for the baskets at Keller Williams Realty on Burham Drive and at Windermere on Soundview Drive. The brigade will pick up donations if someone can’t transport food to the donation centers.
The brigade also needs folding tables and chairs to use for the basket-making operation.
Albertson’s will again offer discounted turkeys to customers who buy a certain amount of groceries. The turkey can then be donated to the brigade, and the store will hold it until Thanksgiving.
Basket Brigade
The Basket Brigade is collecting for its food delivery. Collection sites are at 11515 Burnham Drive and Windermere Mortgage Services at 5801 Soundview Drive in Gig Harbor.
For more information, call David Cathers at 253-265-6362 or 253-278-9251.