MILTON — Pace and Milton High Schools are helping to ensure everyone has a Thanksgiving feast.
Both schools held a canned food drive during last month’s rivalry week, which coincided with the Panthers’ and Patriots’ football game. MHS students won the competition by collecting around 23,000 pounds of goods; PHS collected more than 20,000 pounds.
While the Panthers won the competition, the real winner was the food pantry at the First Baptist Church of Milton, which received all the donations.
Associate Pastor Bo Mills said the competition raised the bar for collections.
“Two years ago, we had a total of 18,000 pounds; last year we had around 18,000 from each school,” he said.
More telling?
“Last year, we rented a U-Haul truck for each school; this year we had to rent two trucks for each school due to the weight restrictions (on the vehicles),” he said.
Bringing in more than 43,000 pounds is next year’s goal, Mills said.
The food pantry, located on 6797 Caroline St., serves the entire county, particularly 17,000 people each year, Mills said. He estimates this year’s donations will last six to eight months.
As part of the holiday efforts, MHS staffers prepared Thanksgiving meal boxes for families in need.
Missy Jordan, a vocational instructor, oversees the meal box initiative. The school’s staffers work together to provide Thanksgiving necessities from canned vegetables to ingredients needed to make a pie for dessert. All together, the school filled 27 boxes with the help of Walmart, which donated 27 cold turkeys.
While the school only had the resources to fill 25 boxes, the MHS class that collected the most canned goods throughout the school during rivalry week decided to forgo a planned pizza party and use the funds toward providing two additional meal boxes.
Jordan said Woodbine United Methodist Church in Pace also contributed by collaborating with the school to provide Thanksgiving packages for nine families.
Pace High School’s National Honor Society / BETA club adopted families in need and will provide them with a traditional Thanksgiving meal, according to PHS science teacher Lisa Dillashaw.
“We have done this for the past four years and are doing so again this year,” she said in an email.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: DOING THEIR PART