Key Club collects food during parade

Photo: Robin Priest

KEY CLUB CONTRIBUTIONS - During the Norway-Paris Christmas Parade, Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Key Club members gathered 10 cases of donated food for the Oxford Hills Food Pantry. Tina Croteau, the Norway-Paris Kiwanis liaison with the Key Club, shown seated on the float, said 10 cartons of food were donated by parade watchers.

OXFORD HILLS - Members of the Key Club at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School had a novel idea for the Christmas Parade.

Instead of riding on a float, throwing candy and edibles to the cheering crowd, the Key Clubbers pulled wagons and the crowd threw food to them. By the end of the parade they had collected 10 large cardboard cartons of foodstuffs, which they turned over to the Food Pantry for distribution to local people in need.

The club's faculty advisor, Joe Cummings, said the food collected during the parade was not the only food donated to the food pantry. The members brought in food last week, to make up 15 baskets for distribution to those in tough straits this season.

Cummings said eight key clubbers marched in the parade, but the OHCHS chapter has around 50 on the rolls.

"We raise money for social services around the area by sponsoring the annual talent show. We operate the concession stand at basketball games, and we do things that don't raise money, such as trick-or-treating for UNICEF and sponsoring blood drives for the Red Cross," said Cummings, who was a Key Club member in his student days at Oxford Hills.

Both boys' and girls' key clubs were a feature of school life until the 1980s when, Cummings said, the organization went co-ed. It is a member of Kiwanis World-Wide and the local sponsor is the Norway-Paris Kiwanis.