Parsnips, celery root and house-made bacon swam alongside the “usual suspects” in Matthew Safranek’s clam chowder at the 27th Great Chowder Contest in Edgartown on Saturday.
Mr. Safranek, a chef at Atria, joined 10 other contestants in the annual Christmas throwdown, a fundraiser for the Red Stocking Fund that has been sponsored by radio station WMVY for the past 10 years.
Nearly 75 years have passed since the first six Red Stocking Fund recipients most likely opened Donald Duck pull toys and Snoopy Sniffers instead of today’s more popular Furbys and Barbies. This year organizers Kerry Alley and Lorraine Clark are expecting the Red Stocking Fund to make Christmas dreams come true for approximately 475 children, from newborns to eighth graders.
The Gazette library seems to have files on any topic. Some are slim
(Finnish prefabs, for example). Others are so fat they have spilled over
into second and third envelopes. The Red Stocking file is just such a
case. The envelopes are thick with clippings and creased from use. They
have surprising weight in the palm of the hand.
"Christmas was about getting nothing," she says in
clipped Yankee cadence. Lorraine Beaucaire Clark's family did not
speak English when they came from Portugal; her great-uncle, a Chilmark
resident for 55 years,speaks only Portuguese.
Red Stocking Fillers This Year Will Delight 270 Island Children
By ALEXIS TONTI
At the other end of the year from the sleek summer fundraising
season, a grassroots charity pursues its purpose.
The Red Stocking Fund holds no auctions or celebrity fundraisers. It
has no board of directors, and its managers bear no administrative
titles. The core group of volunteers meets only once a year to set the
date - this year, Dec. 19 - on which strained and straitened
parents will receive the Island's gifts for more than 270 of its
children.
When Lorraine Clark walks into Grace Church in Vineyard Haven on the
morning of Dec. 17, Christmas officially begins.
There, packed high to the ceiling and filling almost every available
space will be over 250 large, white bags - each one stuffed with
dozens of wrapped gifts. Each bag will be marked with its own number,
and soon people will trickle in to claim them.
More than a decade ago Ida (Buzzy) Gardner wrote a story about a
woman who brought small toys to young children on Martha's
Vineyard. The Santa Claus Lady was her name, and as the story goes she
"brought Christmas in tiny packages wrapped in odd pieces of paper
tightly tied with bits of ribbon."
The Red Stocking Fund is the Vineyard's holiday Santa. Red Stocking elves are already quietly working behind the scenes to make sure every Island child with needs has a warm and love-filled season. Last year 275 children in 173 families got a boost of holiday cheer, thanks to Red Stocking. This year the number is expected to be higher.
The miracle that is Red Stocking has happened again. Through a tremendous effort on the part of hundreds of donors, volunteers, vendors and Red Stocking committee members, we distributed food, clothing, books and toys to 334 Vineyard children from 230 families. The piles and piles of wrapped presents that filled Grace Church last Thursday were cheerfully and efficiently sorted and organized into a sea of numbered bags ready for Friday morning’s pickup. This represented an increase of over 50 children from last year.
Seventy years ago Addie Crist and Irene Flanders sat together to sew six red cloth stockings.
They filled them mostly with necessaries but also with a ray of Christmas delight for six needy Island kids.
They didn’t call it the Red Stocking Fund and could not have known their simple act of kindness would become an extraordinary source of hope and joy for several thousand Island children and their families.
