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The Tinsel Trail is open, the Yuletide Jubilee has come and gone, it’s officially the Christmas season in Bainbridge. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to attend the holiday festivities, or even visit their family this time of year, with many sick, disabled and elderly confined to nursing homes and assisted living facilities. That doesn’t mean they’ve been forgotten.

Denise Webb has done a lot of charity work over the years, much of it through Memories Car Club. The club’s latest charitable endeavor was last Thursday, with Webb and the club’s secretary and treasurer, Joanne Sullivan, handing out Christmas cookies to the residents of Memorial Manor and Bainbridge Health and Rehab.

“We ordered out 175 tubs of cookies,” Webb said. “We get them from Thomasville, at Flower’s Bakery. We have to special order them ahead of time… they specially do these for diabetics and all.” According to her, there was only one case of cookies left over. “What we do is we’ll give that out to kids that we adopt during Christmas. We’ll give them out to them,” she said.

This marks the third year the club has handed these out, with last year being canceled by the pandemic. Their efforts have been met with positive feedback from those both living and working at the nursing homes.

“The residents look forward to it,” said Penny Heard, activities director at Bainbridge Health and Rehab. “It gives them a special treat for those that, a lot of them, don’t have anyone coming in that can give them something.”

The club relies on fundraising to be able to purchase the cookies.

“The only way we could do this is that people helps donate things to us, to make this possible for us to raise money to buy these,” Webb said. “You don’t ever know who we will hand out a tub of cookies to. It might be one of your family members… but when we raise money selling a dollar raffle ticket and all, and give a five-dollar tub of cookies to your family member, and it puts a smile on their face, it was well worth putting that smile on their face.”

Webb and Sullivan both agreed that they and the club strive to put smiles on the resident’s faces.

The club is currently selling raffle tickets, and will be handing out the prizes this Saturday at 4:00 p.m., at Boyd’s Bar-Be-Que.

“I would love to see people come to Boyd’s Saturday and support our car club,” she continued. “If you don’t have an old car, just come and support us, and let us know that, what we’re doing for our community and your community, it makes a difference in your life and our lives.”

The next major charity project Webb and Memories Car Club is working on is collecting toys and gifts for families for Christmas, with specific requests for a two-year-old boy, a nine-year-old boy, and a thirteen-year-old girl. Webb encouraged donations, but specified that any toys or gifts must be new and unwrapped, not previously used. Any donations should be dropped off at Webb’s store, LTL Flowers and Gifts, located on the square.