Holiday baskets - fruit of a rich spirit

When Racheal MacLeod was growing up in Victoria, British Columbia, her family was poor, but rich in spirit.

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Her late father, Ralph Wilkie, didn't make more than $350 a month in the late 1950s. He shoveled coal into Army barracks furnaces so soldiers could stay warm. Her late mother, Joy, took care of MacLeod and her seven siblings.

When the holidays came around, the Wilkie family was one of those to receive a Christmas food basket.

For the past seven years, MacLeod spearheaded a Christmas basket program through the Juneau Yacht Club in return for all of those years her family was helped.

But after seven years, MacLeod also felt she gave all she could give.

She won't be preparing the food baskets this Christmas, but REACH Inc. and the Home Builders Association (HBA) will continue the project.

"This is the only way I could pay back those food boxes I received as a kid," said MacLeod, wearing a red holiday sweatshirt bearing her mother's namesake. "After seven years, I think I've paid them back."

REACH is preparing the Christmas boxes and HBA, through its Home Builders Care program, is collecting funds and buying the food. The two groups will jointly prepare the food baskets to be delivered to the Salvation Army, Glory Hole and St. Vincent de Paul.

Donations may be sent to the HBA of Juneau, 1900 Crest St., Suite 204, Juneau, AK 99801. Donations can also be deposited in any Wells Fargo Bank to the Home Builders of Juneau Builders Care Christmas boxes account. HBA accepts credit cards and donations may be faxed to 463-5821. For questions, contact Rita Hamilton, treasurer of HBA at 463-5774.

Hamilton said REACH and HBA will prepare at least 300 food baskets to help keep pace with MacLeod's efforts over the years. HBA needs to raise $10,000 and has already collected $4,000. REACH needs about 125 more boxes, Day Habilitation Coordinator Nikki Richert said.

MacLeod, a yacht club member, started preparing the baskets in 1996 after she felt the club could do something to help the community's needy, she said.

She did the job with meticulous organizational and planning skills. If she saw food deals over the summer, she'd buy early. One year she got a deal on candy canes and kept them until Christmas so area children could enjoy a treat. She used Super Bear's price smashers to take advantage of deep discounts. She took notes on index cards, tracked every penny and kept all of the receipts. She calculated the expenses and donations so many times she often came within $1. And the years she had a few more cents, she'd donate to the Salvation Army's Christmas kettle, she said.

For the first five years, MacLeod turned her house into a "mini-warehouse" of Christmas baskets. The front bedroom was taken over by non-perishables to the point where she had to take off the bedroom closet doors to squeeze in more canned goods. The lighter weight food such as marshmallows and boxes of pie crust took over the bed. Other food took up space in her garage and the food basket boxes themselves consumed a large portion of her living room.

And frozen turkeys were stored all over Juneau: in friends and family members' freezers and of course her own freezer.

The last year MacLeod did the project out her home in 2000 - she had 176 boxes of food stacked neatly on sheets on her garage floor so they wouldn't get dirty.

She, her family and other volunteers would form an assembly line and fill the boxes every third Monday of December. The next day volunteers from the Juneau Yacht Club picked up the boxes. The charitable organizations would then pick up the boxes at the club and distribute them to the needy.

"It was so much fun Rita; I wish you could have been there," she said chuckling to Hamilton.

In 2000, Yacht Club member Tom Satre offered storage space at Glacier Marine Transport/Northland Services Inc., where he is a manager. MacLeod still did all of the work in collecting money and buying food. Glacier Marine now distributes the food to each of the three charitable organizations. Food Services of America stores frozen food at its facility.

Seven years and 1,214 Christmas boxes later, MacLeod began to lose some of her enthusiasm for the project. What used to be a joy, started to feel like a chore, she said.

She knew she had given all she could give.

"She was a super woman and not enough people knew," Richert said.