Charity Drive Is A Success

By JOSH KOVNER     Courant Staff Writer

November 21 2005  

MIDDLETOWN -- Hundreds of needy families will eat well on Thanksgiving on the strength of a charity drive by two dozen Rotary Clubs in Southern Connecticut that raised more than $33,000.  

The Middletown Rotary Club led the way, collecting about $5,000 in

donations. Last year, the drive raised about $32,000. The totals include a 50 percent match by Liberty Bank.  

On Tuesday, members of the Middletown club will drive to the back of the Super Stop & Shop on East Main Street and pick up boxes of food to deliver to families identified by the city's American Red Cross branch.  

Each box contains a turkey and several side dishes - enough to serve six to eight people, said Steve Young, a Middletown businessman who is the driving force behind the clubs' regional effort.  

"It's a first-class meal - a wrapped turkey, a box of pies, potatoes, squash, buttered rolls - everything you'd want in a Thanksgiving dinner," said Young.

He said the clubs had to work a little harder this year.

"With Hurricane Katrina and all the other things that have happened, a lot of people are a little spent-out on giving. There's been a lot of opportunities to give over the year," said Young.  

But the need hasn't lessened.  

The local Red Cross gave the Middletown Rotary Club a list of 75 needy families and will provide 250 other families this weekend with Thanksgiving baskets donated by the Renegade Pigs Motorcycle Club, a band of police officers, correctional officers and firefighters.

"The Rotary Club delivers and that's a tremendous benefit to us," said Brenda Simmons, executive director of the Middlesex-Central Connecticut Chapter of the Red Cross. "Some of these families are homebound."  

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