Participants are pictured in this year’s St. Susan Holiday Haul. Submitted photo

St. Susan Center’s annual Holiday Haul brought in $23,369.69 this year, Executive Director Cherie Rowland said.

“What’s significant about the money part is that it helps pay for the lights,” she said. “It allows us to get supplies we may not normally have coming in. It helps with the salaries for the staff. I have six people working here, along with 75 volunteers who put in over 550 hours of volunteer time.”

By the end of December, Rowland expects the center to have served over 50,000 meals this year. In addition, the Holiday Haul also brought in 19,365 pounds of food.

“This is record breaking,” Rowland said. “It was a record breaking year last year too, and now we’ve beat that record.”

St. Susan Center had multiple schools help this year, including Maple Grove, Southwestern and Panama along with Jefferson and Persell in Jamestown. The Falconer junior varsity girls basketball team helped sort the collection on Dec. 15 and the Diamond Dogs team from Frewsburg sorted supplies on Dec. 16.

“The significance of it all makes me emotional,” Rowland said. “The world is in such disarray that I think people sometimes feel there is no community or no support from people. Here in Jamestown, we have that community. We have that sense of community that many strive for.”

Rowland said some people who came in to support the less fortunate may be living paycheck to paycheck, but they still brought in three or four cans of food.

“It may cause stress for them, but they still did it,” Rowland said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

St. Susan Center had multiple companies in the community who donated or helped support the Holiday Haul, including Synergy, Cummins, Jamestown Awning, Jamestown Cycle Shop, and Jamestown Mattress. Mayor-Elect Kim Ecklund also supported the Haul by bringing in her own canned goods and stopping by to cheer them on multiple times. Rowland thanked Media One Radio Group and the Post-Journal for helping to get the word out about the haul.

The Falconer boys basketball team came on Dec. 27 to help date and inspect all canned goods.

Rowland said St. Susan Center has shared about 1,000 pounds with The Salvation Army and another 1,000 pounds with other organizations.

“There was such community spirit that we saw for the Holiday Haul,” Rowland said. “We had lines of cars coming in, so much so that we had to move to the entrance of the parking lot to be able to accommodate them. This is my third Holiday Haul, and every year I am blown away. Every time I think it can’t get any better and then it hits my heart even more. It really hit hard this year.”