Whitewater Community Gives Generously to Mitten Tree Project

Shown above, on Jan. 21^st, accepting a good portion of the collection of more than 600 items from the Mitten Tree project are Rick Fassl, Optimist Project Co-Chair; Kelly Seichter, Director of Instruction; Dr. Lanora Heim, Director of Pupil Services; Jeanine Fassl, Co-Chair of the Optimist Project, and Dr. Jim Shaw, Superintendent for the Whitewater Unified School District.

By Jeanine Fassl

It is with our most sincere gratitude that the UW-Whitewater/Community Optimist Club extends a huge thank you to our community. The community responded beyond our expectations! The wonderful people in our community donated over 600 pieces of clothing including socks, underwear, snow pants, hats, scarves, gloves, and 160 pairs of mittens. 105 pairs of those mittens were hand knit by Dottie Koenitzer of Whitewater. A special thanks is given to the generosity of Faye Brugge, at First Citizens State Bank, Diane Carlson, from First English Lutheran Church, for the adorable baby sweaters, those who knit and crochet at PremiereBank and all the other community members who painstakingly hand made dozens and dozens of hats, mittens, sets of both, and scarves! The increase in the collections allowed us to spread out the distribution to other local agencies including the Whitewater Police Department; each of our 10 WPD squad cars received a bag of hats and a bag of mittens or gloves to distribute.

Additional thanks go to the Associated Bank, PremierBank, First Citizens State Bank, Fort Community Credit Union, and First English Lutheran Church, and Irvin L. Young Auditorium for serving as collection sites.

As “Friends of Youth”, the UW-Whitewater/Community Club thanks our very generous local community for helping to spread Christmas cheer this holiday season. We are always looking for new members, year-round, to share that cheerfulness with Whitewater’s youth. If you are interested in joining us in that mission, contact Al Hutchison, President, at alnjoyce.hutchison@gmail.com or visit
http://blogs.uww.edu/uwwcommunityoptimist/ for more details.