MONROE — Monda Hess was blessed by Christmas Stocking Project founder Katheryn Etter from a young age. Hess moved to Monroe after her father died in a car accident when she was 3 years old, leaving her mother a widow with nine children.
Etter was Monroe’s school nurse, and Hess remembers being a student at Northside Elementary when she took her to get winter clothes at a local clothes closet.
“She got me out of school, took me over there because I didn’t have a winter coat. She dressed me up. I felt like a little doll,” Hess recalled. She said Etter did that for other young siblings in her family, too.
Naturally, they also benefited from the Christmas Stocking Fund, waking up to find their shoes filled with fruit, nuts and candy, along with receiving other presents.
“There wouldn’t have been anything for us,” Hess said, if not for Christmas Stocking.
About the Christmas Stocking Fund and how to donate
The Christmas Stocking Fund is an annual effort of the Monroe Woman’s Club. The club collects money and other donations and distributes toys and vouchers for shoes, coats and boots to children in need in the Monroe school district.
Families receive food boxes delivered before Christmas. Every year, the Christmas Stocking benefits hundreds of families. Names of families in need are offered confidentially by school officials, counselors and area churches. The effort requires a multitude of volunteers who shop for families, bake cookies and pack and deliver items.
To donate to the Christmas Stocking Fund, send contributions to 901 16th Ave., Monroe, WI 53566. All contributions are used locally to fund the program.
Though the Christmas Stocking Project may be better known for the delivery of toys and food to children and families, part of the project has focused on seniors since its 1948 founding. She’s helped with other aspects too, but it’s that branch to which Hess has devoted the past 33 years and that she currently co-chairs with Rae Wellnitz.
“Seniors are dear to my heart because I was a certified nurse’s assistant, and I worked in the community for 36 years,” Hess said.
The first component of that effort is the care package, consisting of lotion, shampoo, or conditioner, along with gripper socks donated by the Salvation Army, in bags or stockings that are given to seniors in nursing and assisted living facilities. Nearly 200 residents will receive those gifts this year.
Over 270 more recipients will receive cheer boxes this Christmas, including shut-ins and people with no family. The vast majority are elderly, but Hess did say that they give some boxes to younger people with disabilities that are alone for Christmas.
“You have to understand, this might be the only gift they get, or the only person that they might see during the holidays,” Hess said.
This year’s cheer boxes contain several goodies, including a blueberry loaf and petits fours donated by Colony Brands, as well as clementines and candy. And of course there are the traditional cookies, of various kinds and colors, packed by hand into plastic clamshell containers by volunteers.
One volunteer, Carla Hartwig, 82, has been participating in the Christmas Stocking Project for 58 years, starting when she donated 20 dozen cookies in 1961. By 1965 she was putting together the cookie packs in her home, putting leaves in to extend the table and enlisting her children in assembly. Hartwig housed the operation for 20 years.
Both Hartwig and her daughter Teri were part of the cookie cadre at Behring Senior Center Dec. 10.
Though cheer boxes are filled with sweets, that doesn’t mean diabetic seniors are left out: those recipients will receive apples, clementines and bananas, along with their own personal packages of sugar-free candy.
“Monda’s a wonder,” said Katheryn Etter’s daughter Mary Flynn as she helped Hess pack candy that afternoon. “She honors my mother with the work that she does.”
Flynn was raised to learn the importance of giving, attending donation trips with her mother at a young age. One she remembers in particular was when she was about 7 years old and a little girl proudly showed some dolls her father had given her, made out of typing paper.
Telling the story brings tears to her eyes, contrasting the faceless paper toys with the baby doll she had at home at the time. But of course, Katheryn Etter had gifts to add to the girl’s paper dolls.
Flynn, now of Milwaukee, has come back to Monroe every year since she retired in 2008 to help with the Christmas Stocking Project.
Following the flurry of packing comes delivery, something Wellnitz has participated in.
“They see what you have for them and it’s a look of pure joy,” she said of knocking on seniors’ doors and presenting the gifts. “They’re just happy someone thought of them.”
