For those involved with Help Them to Hope over the decades, this year’s annual drive to aid Lake County’s most vulnerable is bittersweet. The 65th year will be the last.
Even as the Hope Fund says adieu, its legacy will live on. There are many individuals and organizations who have benefited from donations given freely during the holiday seasons since HTTH began in 1959.
During that winning streak, close to $3 million was raised for less-fortunate Lake Countians. Generous donors over the years ranged from schoolchildren collecting pennies; bowling teams pooling money; coffee clubs pitching in change; and businesses, like Gurnee Donuts, which placed collection boxes for customers to donate. There was the Waukegan couple who gathered coins from sidewalks and streets during daily walks in their neighborhood.
Names of those who donated were and are published nearly daily during the length of the campaign. No matter how much or how little was mailed in — often from out-of-towners who used to live in the county, or deposited in “The Hope Box” when The News-Sun had a brick-and-mortar presence — names were published with zeal. Since the early 2000s, the fund has been run by a board of directors, made up of mostly retired News-Sun employees.
It was a simple formula that kept chugging until it ran out of steam. Its board of directors is aging in place, with fresh blood unwilling or unable to carry on the newspaper’s tradition. Readers who were donors, too, have dwindled over the life of this Lake County-focused nonprofit.
For that reason, the fund is saying -30-, newspaper parlance meaning the end of a story or article. Ironically, the 65th year has been the traditional retirement age. Or so it used to be.
Newspaper employees did the heavy lifting. They compiled donors’ names, totaled the daily amounts, authored bylined stories about donors and the social service agencies which were recipients of Help Them to Hope funds.
That was one of the rules set up by the newspaper’s employees back in 1959. All money raised during the campaigns had to be spent to benefit Lake County residents.
If you worked at The News-Sun during Hope Fund holiday drives, most employees — from circulation to advertising to composing to editorial — always chipped in and helped without griping much. Some did, of course, but that comes with being part of the journo club. Like pitching in for coffee.
It was the newspaper’s grizzled pressmen who came up with the idea for a county-centric fund to help the needy. They first did it among themselves, using leftover change in their coffee fund in 1958 to offer holiday cheer to one family. In 1959, it went into circulation as a call for newspaper readers to get involved.
HTTH grew into a well-regarded organization which helped plenty of Lake Countians make it through rough spells and brought joy to youngsters during the Christmas season. There remains a lone pressman from that time — Bob Haymaker of Waukegan, a member of the Hope Fund’s board of directors.
While agreeing to end the fund, he has a tinge of sadness over the end of an era. “I don’t like having to do it, but it’s best we just say we’ve had a good run and go out in a blaze of glory,” he said.
This 2023-24 edition of the drive began on Thanksgiving Day and will end early next month, right after we usher in the new year. Members of the volunteer board of directors hope the final Hope Fund, “goes out with a bang.”
Whatever is raised this year will again be distributed across a wide range of social service agencies. The seven Lake County organizations include: A Safe Place, Beacon Place, COOL Ministries, Keeping Families Covered, Love In The Name of Christ Lake County, Mothers Trust Foundation and Roberti Community House. The funds will be distributed early next year.
Richard Ribando, president of Help Them to Hope, said, “Nobody wants to end it, but the reality is we won the war, but we’re losing the battle.” He noted every dollar raised by the holiday Hope Fund over the years went toward enriching the lives of Lake County residents.
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The holiday season is one of giving, yet the needs of the less fortunate don’t end once Christmas trees are kicked to the curb. Even after the Hope Fund is gone, continue to give to Lake County’s various and sundry social service organizations and nonprofits which are on the front lines of healing and nourishing the human spirit.
Winston Churchill, Britain’s legendary prime minister, had it right when he said: “You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.”
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
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