Bayard Rustin Football Team Gives Back

On Thursday night, about 45 Bayard Rustin football players stood in lines outside the Main Line Y in Paoli, quickly passing trash bags full of wrapped presents down a line of players and into a set of tractor trailers.

The boys were participating in the Delaware Valley Children's Charity's holiday gift program, which delivers thousands of Christmas gifts to needy children throughout the five-county area during the holidays. Volunteers from the football team, along with coaches and some family members, spent about four hours loading thousands of presents into trucks on Thursday.

This is the second year Bayard Rustin's football team has helped out at the DVCC's holiday gift project, team mom Susan Fith said. Not only does the team help load some of the almost 7,000 presents into trucks, but they also help provide gifts for the kids too. This year, each of the twelve seniors who volunteered organized the gift-buying for a needy child.

The seniors each recruited some younger players to help them buy gifts for their kids, and then the boys went out and shopped.

"We leave it up to the boys to go out and shop for the kids," said Fith, who has two boys on the team. "They each spend $10 to $20 and they really have a lot of fun picking things out."

Senior Pat Concannon volunteered to sponsor a child this Christmas through the charity. His kid, a 3-year-old boy, will be getting Transformers, lots of action figures and a cool Spiderman toy that shoots web, Concannon said.

"It feels good to be a leader, to lead the younger players to step up and help other kids who are less fortunate," Concannon said. "And hopefully, the kids I'm leading this year will step up next year and lead their own group."

This is the 26th year that the Delaware Valley Children's Charity has sponsored the gift drive. The event grew from the sponsoring of one child as an alternative to the Upper Main Line Y's traditional Christmas Polyanna, and now more than 7,000 children in the five-county area receive gifts through the charity. Many of the children are abused or neglected, homeless, or below the poverty level—"basically any sad situation you can think of," co-founder Janie Wermuth said.

For the Bayard Rustin boys who participate, the event is often very meaningful, team mom Liz Amicone said, while passing bags of gifts in the assembly line.

"They walked away last year with such a good feeling," she added.

"For the boys who are seniors, this is the last thing they really do for the team," Fith said. "… We figured this would be a good memory for everyone."