SHEPHERDSTOWN – For the third year in a row, The Blessings Closet book bag raffle was held Saturday afternoon at the Shepherdstown Volunteer Fire Department’s Barron Hall.
According to Rhonda Gales, director of The Blessings Closet, this annual event was the first her 501©3 nonprofit organization has ever hosted, but the event’s origins go back even further, to December 2020.
“I somehow stumbled into it,” Gales, a retired IRS IT director, said: “I hadn’t planned this at all.
“My family lost our mother during COVID and we had already lost our father years before, so we decided we had to figure out what we would do without them on our first Christmas together. They were always very open-minded about the holidays – they always had the tree decorated and lots of food and candy,” Gales said. “We decided to find a family that we could bless and give them a Christmas dinner on behalf of mom and dad. One of my brothers came back and said, ‘Well, we’re all doing well. Why don’t we take a family and bless them for a week instead, because the kids are out of school for a week?’ So we did that and then a few friends came along.”
This experience opened her eyes to the overwhelming hardship faced by many families with school-age children in the Eastern Panhandle.
“I had no idea about the needs and the way people lived in the community,” Gales said. “I guess I had just gotten used to the routine of going to work, stopping by my parents’ house in Shepherdstown and then driving back home to Martinsburg. I did what I needed to do for myself, but this particular venture really opened my eyes to West Virginia and what was happening here – I couldn’t believe it.”
Gales said The Blessings Closet focuses on the needs of families with school-age children because her family is already involved in education. The organization provides school bags, clothing, school supplies and books for school-age children.
“I come from a long line of educators,” Gales said one of her brothers is a teacher and he noticed that many of his students had been bullied over the years because of the way they dressed. “He had students who wore the same thing every day, and the other children made fun of them because they didn’t understand poverty. If you can’t feed yourself and your family, you don’t think about clothes. So I started a call for used clothes, and since then more and more people have come.”
Blessings Closet, which opened a store at 324 West Stephen Street in Martinsburg last year, accepts new or gently used clothing as well as backpacks, books and school supplies.
In addition, the organization also accepts monetary donations, which are particularly useful for food assistance. The Blessings Closet is ready to deliver food to anyone suffering from food insecurity, be it a family with school-age children or a hermit.
“We try to give the community what it needs,” Gales said. “I’ve found that most people are not lazy. They’re not bums. Many people work two jobs and still can’t make ends meet because they’re not making what they should be making in the state of West Virginia.”
A fundraiser for The Blessings Closet will be held at 7 p.m. on Sept. 21 at The Corner Connection in Charles Town. There will be live music by Nashville artist Dawn Rix and jazz and R&B band Four and Two, a dinner buffet and bar, a silent auction, a raffle and a photo opportunity with Rix. To purchase tickets to the event, contact Gales at 304-676-7750.
To learn more about The Blessings Closet, visit https://www.theblessingscloset.com/.