By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP — Eight Ashtabula-area families are enjoying a bountiful Thanksgiving Day feast today thanks to the compassion of Braden Junior High School students and staff.
The school’s student council adopted eight families through Catholic Charities. Steve Kray, a science-history teacher who helped coordinate the event with his wife, Nicole, said this is the fifth year the school has taken on the project. However, it was greatly expanded from the two families they adopted last year.
The students held a food drive in their homerooms from Nov. 9 to 20. Steve Kray said there was friendly competition between homerooms and the two grades: seventh and eighth.
By the end of the collection period, they had collected 1,460 cans or packages of nonperishable food.
They also collected nearly $700 to purchase perishable items. Kray said teachers Ted Coxon and Al Runyan took on the task of shopping for those items: eight turkeys, eight hams, rolls and bags of potatoes.
Members of student council met Monday afternoon to pack the nonperishable items into boxes under the direction of the Krays and teachers Jodi Cash and Mary Cornely. Kray said any food left over from that effort was donated to the school’s Teen Institute project, which collects for four food pantries.
Volunteers from the school, student council members and their parents were to deliver the boxes to families Wednesday afternoon. Kray said that, thanks to the generosity of area bakeries, the smorgasbord even included 27 fresh pies.
He praised the work of the school’s staff and 340 students to make the project a success.
“This was run by the student council, but it really was sponsored by all of Braden,” he said.
