Published: November 29, 2008 07:15 pm            

Gary grad spreads giving spirit

GARY — Former McDowell County residents who remember what it’s like not to have very much are being urged to “dust off” their wallets and give to the Community Christmas Tree.

Phyllis Cates, who now lives in Lorton, Va. near Washington, D.C., is a graduate from Gary High School in 1958. She uses the Internet to stay in touch with her former classmates; one of her latest messages involves the Community Christmas Tree. She recently e-mailed the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and asked for an address where donors can send contributions.

“My sister and I try to contribute every year,” Cates said. “We try to find a tree (Salvation Army Angel Tree) and get a couple.”

Cates and her siblings grew up in Gary and later scattered across the country, but they carried with them the generous spirit instilled by their parents, Ed and Helen Lambert. Christmas shopping was a year-round project for Cates’ mother.

“My mom and dad, they did contribute to the Community Christmas Tree fund. Every pay day she would buy a Christmas toy, one toy a pay day because there were six kids in the family,” Cates recalled. “One pay day she would by a girl’s toy, and the next she would buy a boy’s toy. She would do it all year long, and at Christmas time distribute them.”

Some of the toys her mother purchased were given to children in need.

“She would take these to the hospital or find a needy family, and what was left over she would take to the Salvation Army. My mom and dad were always giving and I guess that’s where we got it from,” Cates said. “My dad used to tell us, ‘If you don’t share what you have, you may end up with nothing.’”

Families kept hogs, raised gardens and canned their harvests to stretch resources. When layoffs hit the local mines, people in the community helped one another.

“When coal miners didn’t work and if younger men were laid off, my dad made sure there was food on those families’ tables,” Cates said

Cates is now asking her former classmates to help the Community Christmas Tree.

“I sent an e-mail out to everyone I have an e-mail address for. Every month I send out an e-mail with the birthdays for that month. We graduated 50 years ago, but we’re still very close, tight knit classmates. So when I see something like this that might interest them I send it out because they’re pretty giving also. I say ‘Get out that wallet and dust it off, I’m begging for a good cause.”

Contributions from across the country are already on their way to Mercer County.

“I know my sister in Arizona sent hers in, and my sister here put hers in and I put mine in the mail today,” she said Tuesday. “I did talk to one of my classmates in Roanoke (Va.) yesterday. She doesn’t have a computer. She said she was going to get her check in the mail also.”

Gary is “a very giving community,” Cates said. “We remember where we came from and when we had nothing. I tell my classmates that we’ve been there when we didn’t have a whole lot, so we know what it’s like.”

Even after moving to Tazewell, Va., Helen Lambert continued to give by helping children there “in a discreet manner.”

“She still continued with the Christmas Tree and the giving spirit,” Cates said.

Contributions can be mailed to Community Christmas Tree, P.O. Box 1599, Bluefield, WV 24701.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.