Reflections on Stella Wells baskets

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Stella Wells Christmas Baskets program has grown by leaps and bounds and new volunteers have stepped in to help the labor-intensive program.

Boo Ewing and Lee Geasland took over the basket program in 1984 after Stella Wells stopped because of health issues in 1983. Ewing said the program was named in honor of Wells.

Later came Norma Jean Hendricks, Dori Howerter and many others. Today, David Winchell serves as Stella Wells president and he’s training his replacement, Kala Green.

Ewing and Hendricks talked about the struggles in the early days of getting the program going with help from local businesses, volunteers and the Parsons Emergency Relief Ministries. Ewing, who now lives in Texas, remembers knocking on a lot of doors for donations. A tree auction in the fourth year, 1988, helped raise money for food and brought in a new group of generous donors. Any extra money collected went into the bank for the next year’s program.

The program operated from donated building space, so it moved around over the years. The old Sutherland’s building serves as the current home and costs the program $1,000 a year to lease.

Ewing and Hendricks remember volunteers meeting the year-to-year challenges head-on. One year, Hendricks was in a wheelchair after an accident but still helped.

“It’s been a long and successful journey,” Hendricks said. “It’s a very worthwhile project.”

The volunteers collected many stories over the years of the families they helped and the good times the volunteers had while helping the community. In the early years, all baskets were delivered, up to 400 or more. Having families pick up their baskets is a relatively recent change, given the age of the program.

Volunteers delivered turkey to people who didn’t have an oven or gas to heat the home, let alone use the stove. The program helped where it could in these instances. Delivery volunteers included youth who saw firsthand the benefit of the basket program.

“These kids got a better lesson than anything we could possibly do for them,” Ewing said.

Another year Hendricks delivered a box to a young expectant mother. Her Christmas tree was a decorated branch from a bush. The young lady was gifted with new jeans and a shirt and a job at the Red Bull. 

“So there was a lot of good stories that came out of this in addition to just being Christmas baskets,” Ewing said. “I think it was a good lesson for everybody to learn how to help each other. That’s kind of the story.”

“We were really close to the people. We saw and there was really a need,” Hendricks said.

“We learned a lot about helping others. We learned about their problems that a lot of people were too proud to ask for help. This was good for them. We did find those, too,” Ewing said.

While Ewing and Hendricks remembered the struggles in the beginning, things got easier as the Parsons community bought into the basket program. More volunteers came, schools helped, the corrections camp when it was operating in Oswego also helped, civic groups also helped.

Ewing remembers Sam Walton, who owned Walmart at the time, donated to the program and offered additional help by buying breakfast for 20 children and then giving them $20 to spend at Walmart on basket delivery day. Some of the kids received coats also because they had none.

Ewing and Hendricks expressed thankfulness for the current Stella Wells volunteer crew and their creativity.

“So far it’s been good for Parsons and it’s good for the people that are able to get help,” Ewing said.

“It’s been a good run. And the program is wonderful, and they have really done great things with it,” Hendricks added. Hendricks, now 93, helped with the program well into her 80s. Ewing helped for six years until she and her husband moved to Texas.

Winchell said he worked as Geasland’s helper beginning in the early 1990s. He helped find efficiencies with help from local industries that saved back-breaking labor and time when the program still picked up groceries from stores and brought them to a central location for boxing and then delivering. When Geasland died, Hendricks gave Winchell Geasland’s duties. 

“So that’s how I got involved with it because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got volunteered,” Winchell said.

Now, a board oversees the entire program. Winchell is president, Linda Proehl is vice president. Others are Montie Taylor, Diane McConnell and Dori Howerter. Then there are committees that oversee other aspects of the program, such as the tree auction and the baskets.

As the tree auction and silent auction generated more donations, the basket program would grow the number of baskets available for families who needed them. Each year, 25 to 50 baskets were added, he said. The tree auction raised $63,890 this year and Winchell said he spent $47,417 on groceries this year at King Cash Saver. King Cash delivers the groceries to the Sutherland’s building, he said.

Winchell is pleased with the Sutherland’s location and the efficiencies volunteers found in the flow. Volunteers load the boxes and groceries into cars, a practice begun during the pandemic. So the families don’t have to get out of the vehicle.

“That was the best thing we ever did. Because when you did it the old way we had people run around everywhere and it was just chaos,” he said.

Volunteers delivered 375 baskets this year and gave away a total of 750.

Winchell marveled at the Parsons community’s embrace of the basket program. From donations to volunteers, the community has delivered.

“So it’s fantastic the way the community has bought into this,” he said.

Stella Wells, “She started a wonderful thing.”