A Successful Community Cards Campaign

By Rick Hartman, Holy Family Parish Trustee

I’d like to personally express my genuine, heartfelt thanks to all who contributed to Holy Family Parish’s campaign to collect greeting cards for residents of Alpine Rehabilitation & Nursing Center and Rockton Plaza in Little Falls. We collected a grand total of 388 spring and Easter cards! Each resident received 2-3 of them, and they were delivered in time for the Easter holiday. Although my interaction with residents was very limited, representatives of Alpine and Rockton Plaza were thoroughly grateful. I kept hearing how the valentines from earlier were a big hit, and they were looking forward to this new round of cards.

As you may already know, a major feature of Alpine is its nursing home. I can imagine the compassionate care that the staff gives to their residents. I imagine that many of the residents have friends and family who talk and visit with them. I also imagine that some do not. I imagine that many have experienced great losses in their life, as well, including the death of their spouse or partner. And even in the best of circumstances, it still is not the best circumstance for those who live there. They are simply not in their own home. They likely do not talk and visit with friends and family as often as they once did. Plus, their holiday traditions of years past are likely no longer the same.

Rockton Plaza is a housing complex with single-unit apartments for those who are at least 55 years old or have a disability. While not everything said about Alpine also applies to Rockton Plaza, some of the situations are at least certainly similar. I have been told that many of the residents are lonely. Some of them don’t spend much time away from the building, and some have few, if any, close friends and family. And even if they do– Think of the joy that comes from receiving a nice card!

That was the reasoning behind this project: To treat your neighbors as you would want to be treated. This was a simple, but impactful way to bring people together while expressing words of hope and love to those who especially need to hear them in our community.

I know that many of the 388 spring and Easter cards came from fellow members of Holy Family Parish. For that, I am extremely pleased and grateful. I also know that we received tremendous help from outside our church, as well. The WKTV team amazed us all by dropping off 155 cards of their own! About a dozen cards came from patrons of the Little Falls Public Library, as well as a dozen more from the Little Falls Girl Scouts. Several cards were kindly mailed to us from Utica, Rome, and Oriskany because they had read about it in the local news: from The Daily Sentinel of Rome, WKTV.com, and The Daily Post Digital of Little Falls.

I’d like to publicly thank our pastor, Father Brian Slezak, who approved of the project and gave me great advice. There are several other individuals I could personally thank in this piece. However, I will not do so for brevity’s sake and to not accidentally omit someone. Those who helped by donating cards to use, completing cards, handing out cards, and spreading the news– you know who you are. I owe you a debt of gratitude.

As for me– all I did was promote an idea and do some basic work to see it through. This project was only successful because of those who became a part of it. It’s akin to what coaches often say about their teams: The coaches play only a minor role; the credit truly goes to the players. The credit of this card campaign goes to all who participated. But in the end, I know that the ultimate credit goes to God, who plants the seeds of good ideas in our minds, and then guides the right people to come together to make them happen.