Single mom looking for work hopes Goodfellows can provide holiday joy for kids

At a time when many folks are preparing for holiday family gatherings and scrambling for what they consider the perfect gift, Sonora is trying to fight off the exact opposite feeling.

She recently lost her job and has spent the past four months looking for another to support herself, a single mother, and her three children ages 17, 13 and 9. Like any mom, she wants them to experience holiday joy — but such things cost money, and she simply doesn’t have any.

That’s where the Goodfellow Fund can step in and make a difference, something they’ve been doing for families such as Sonora’s for more than a century. This year they are giving away $100 gift cards to be used at Old Navy stores, providing children with new and fashionable clothes, maybe even something to keep them warm in the cold winter months.

“This is a help with how the economy is right now,” Sonora said. “Even though my oldest doesn’t receive one, it still helps with the two that do. Being able to just give them something is a blessing this time of the year.”

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.