Adopt-a-Family finishes another year

MILLERTON — With 20 percent more families than last year, the local Adopt-a-Family initiative has stepped up and met local need, ensuring that many families will be waking up to presents Christmas morning.

For the past three weeks, the NorthEast-Millerton Library’s Annex has been packed with incoming presents. Tables  filled with plastic trucks, Barbies, MP3 players and more have been carefully sorted and distributed to close to 150 families and more than 300 children. Of those 150, more than 80 families were “adopted outâ€� to individuals and organizations who will provide all the family’s gifts.

“It’s been a huge success,� said Stacey Moore, who for the past decade and a half has run the program. “The community has just been phenomenal this year.�

There is always a bit of rush right before the holidays, and Moore said there were sure to be a few more families that get added to the list right up until the holidays. But the majority of donations have come in and most of the shopping has been completed as well, using the monetary donations that the group receives every year.

Local stores like Oblong Books & Music and Saperstein’s in the village have continued over the years to offer discounts to both Moore and anyone shopping for Adopt-a-Family gifts. Riley’s Furniture has offered a discounted mattress set to a family that has fallen on hard times.

The local Adopt-a-Family chapter covers families in the two local school districts, Webutuck and Pine Plains. But the donations come from New York as well as a few supporters  in Connecticut.

In the Annex, Moore and her close group of volunteers helped to sort the toys on the tables, eventually filling up many 55-gallon black bags for families to pick up. It’s all very discrete, fellow volunteer Karen McGinness explained, and there is no direct contact between the adopters and the families the program supports.

“Many of the families write thank you notes and we pass them on to the proper people,� she explained. “That’s always nice. Some are in tears when they first come in. ‘All this is for me?’�

At the end of last week, Moore said a final shopping trip would be held over the weekend and that the majority of gifts would be sorted and distributed by the end of the weekend. Local businessman Jonathan Bee was a late contributor, fresh up from New York City where the toy drive he organizes with the help of hosts David Barton and Susanne Bartsch collected over 10,000 toys. Bee brought up a truckload of gifts and supplies to add to the Adopt-a-Family effort, as well as a sizeable donation from Bette Midler, who has a home in Millbrook.

Bee’s donations from the city were made in memory of Jill Clayburgh, a Connecticut resident and actress who recently died. Last year Clayburgh and her nephew had wanted to help out unloading boxes brought up from the city, and Bee said her enthusiasm “really motivated me to make sure we were going to be able to bring toys up again this year.

“Hopefully it will inspire people locally to come out and do things like that,� he added. “If people don’t come out and give, there really aren’t any toys to provide to families in need.�

“We’ve covered everybody who hasn’t been adopted as of today,� Moore reported. “But people will still keep going and we’ll keep going.�

“Everybody has a bad year every now and again,� McGinness said, looking at the all of the toys. “But I think a lot of kids are going to have a good Christmas this year.�