Mom grateful for warm clothes Goodfellow Fund provided for her son

Stephanie finally defeated her demon. After being addicted to methamphetamine for many years, she is now sober and has been for three years.

But life remains hard. A single mom, she is working to support herself and her 6-year-old son, who is now living with her. She wants him to enjoy the holiday season like most other youngsters.

Also, they are alone as her family is back in Arkansas.

The Goodfellow Fund wants to help. The Star-Telegram charity has been assisting people like Stephanie and her son for more than a century, and this year they are giving away $100 gift cards from Old Navy stores to brighten the holidays.

“I was out of work and recently started back to work. I have a lot of catching up on rent and bills,” she said. “I’m single because I am working on myself. I am choosing me over others, so for now just me and my son is enough.”

Stephanie plans to use the gift card to buy warm clothes for school that she could not otherwise afford.

“We are grateful and thankful that we received our gift,” she said.

About the Goodfellow Fund

The story on the Goodfellow website describes its beginning as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, started by the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1909. A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.

A couple of years later, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellow campaign. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

To donate online and find out more, visit goodfellowfundfw.com/donate. To donate with a check, send checks made out to the Goodfellow Fund to P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth, TX, 76101.

This story was originally published November 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM.