Bundles of giving

OTHELLO — The Othello Community Christmas Baskets program held its 47th annual donation deliveries Saturday for individuals and families in need during the holiday season.

The Community Christmas Baskets committee, run by a group of local community members, has been accepting donations throughout the year, ready to put the packages together to deliver before Christmas. Volunteers with vehicles ready for loading lined up behind the city of Othello Fire Station Saturday morning. 

Committee Co-President Merritt Johnson and his wife, Charlotte Johnson, were helping run the show.

“Right now we're at 363 (baskets),” Charlotte Johnson said. “We tried to keep it around 350. We pre-order a lot of stuff so that's kind of where we're at. I mean, we have a little extra so we can go up from there. The year of COVID we did over 400.”

Merritt Johnson said he was part of the original group that created the basket donation event. 

“There were six of us that started it out. We were all firemen and Eagles (Club) members and we had a couple of bad accidents right before Christmas. We knew the families weren’t going to have much of a Christmas and we got talking about it, so the six of us put in $20 apiece and we did Christmas for I think five or six families that year.”

Merritt Johnson explained how the group continued to organize the event after the first year.

“We knew there was a need and kept going. I'm the last surviving member of that group,” he said. “We were firemen so (eventually) we just had the firemen kind of take it and then they said ‘Well, we don't want to do it anymore.’ So we just made a committee, me, my brother and some other people and we just kept it going.”

Charlotte Johnson added that some of the families still needed help the following year after the first event. She also said this year’s event was going excellently so far.

“The youth have joined us and brought us into the 21st century,” she said. “The youth have come down because there's a lot of putting things together, like the apples and onions have to be all sorted and we bag beans. So the community donates apples, beans, onions, potatoes and onions.”

Several family members and young volunteers were working alongside the older committee members Saturday to load the packages into the delivery cars.

Ken Johnson, Merritt Johnson’s nephew, also helps organize the event and said he hopes to see it continue through even younger generations. 

“Now my sons have joined us, so it’s generational,” he said. 

Merritt Johnson said the fire department does not organize the basket donation, but it does allow the use of the station for storage and for loading the deliveries. The baskets are not so much baskets as boxes of food, utensils, toys, hats, gloves and other useful items Ken Johnson said were to help the families make a nice meal and enjoy their Christmas. 

“It's a lot of work, but … I was helped when I was about 8 years old, so I thought ‘I'm going to help if I ever get that position,’ and so God put me in that position,” Merritt Johnson said. “This is the 47th year, started with the five or six baskets and it's up to that (363). The community does an excellent job of supporting us.”

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    Cars acting as volunteer delivery vehicles line up behind the city of Othello Fire Station Saturday morning for the Community Christmas Baskets program’s 47th donation event.
  

    Christmas baskets and food are loaded into a community member’s truck to be delivered to families in need for the holidays for the Othello Community Christmas Basket program.