Hays County Food Bank Executive Director Jerry Gracy gratefully accepts a donation of more than $3,000 from beaming Negley Elementary School student Zach Collins. The donation represents the cost of Thanksgiving meals for more than 150 Hays County residents and dramatically (and unforgettably) capped off this year’s hugely successful Turkeys Tackling Hunger campaign in Hays CISD. (Photo by Jim Cullen)
by JIM CULLEN
The giving spirit of the holiday season got an unforgettable jump start recently with what is in all likelihood an unprecedented expression of charity from such a young child. Zachary Collins, a seven-year-old student at Negley Elementary School, decided that he liked the feeling of giving his crumpled $20 bill to the annual Turkeys Tackling Hunger campaign last year, especially considering the fact that he was told it would feed an entire family.
Zach held onto that feeling into this fall’s renewal of the Hays County Food Bank’s campaign and he told his mother, Negley Elementary Registrar Laurie Collins, that he had decided to help bring Thanksgiving meals to not one – but 200 – families this year. The Negley Navigators were among a number of local campuses to host “The Turkey,” Jane Kirkham, who serves on the food bank’s board of directors, and inspires schools for the cause. Collectively, those local campuses would go to work to once again successfully raise thousands of dollars for the food bank’s holiday effort.
But Zach was determined to make it his personal mission to feed a huge host of families and he set forth with logistical support from his parents, Laurie and Jimmy Collins, setting up a blog and a Facebook page, complete with an explanatory video and Paypal giving capability. Incredibly, the donations began to come in online, slowly at first, but picking up speed to the point where he and his mom decided to give the effort one last weekend.
Those final few days pushed the young philanthropist past $3,000 in contributions (to go with 150 pounds of canned food he also picked up along the way). The heart-warming culmination of the campaign was his family’s surprise visit to the food bank in San Marcos, where the patient and gracious staff – unaware of the magnitude of Zach’s contribution – nevertheless made time for him and his family and friends despite being obviously swamped with the pressing work of getting boxes of food out to families just days before Thanksgiving.
When Zach actually produced and handed over his plastic bag filled with $3,000, the full measure of this young man’s donation quickly struck the food bank’s Community Relations Coordinator, Jane Moore, whose tears welled up as she accepted the bag, along with Zach’s read-aloud letter of why he had done it. Hays County Food Bank Director Jerry Gracy officially and gratefully acknowledged the young donor’s gift, seeing to it that he had a full tour of the facility and underlining the significance of the gift.
Joining Zach for the memorable moment were his mom and dad, older brother Andrew, older sister Alexandria, Negley Elementary Secretary Michelle Ackart, and representatives of the school district intent on documenting the occasion. The 2011 Turkeys Tackling Hunger campaign thus came to an end in Hays CISD, with the unforgettable conclusion of one very special seven-year-old’s act of compassion for others in the community.
