Widow asks Goodfellows for help to make holidays brighter for her 8 children

Four years ago Shivonda moved to Fort Worth from Louisiana with her husband Jerron to start a new life. However, the happiness and hope they were looking for soon turned into tragedy.

Jerron was murdered in June of this year, leaving Shivonda alone to support their eight children.

“The loss of my husband has been very difficult and hard for me and my family,” she said. “My husband made all the money. I was a stay-home wife, and now it’s just me and my kids here in Texas by ourselves. I don’t have a job and it is so hard.”

With children ranging in age from 1 to 16, finding suitable employment can be a great challenge. It gets even tougher during the holidays — the first holiday season without their father and husband.

The Goodfellow Fund is there to help as they have been for well over a century. Once again this year the Star-Telegram charity has a goal of helping 13,000 children in need in Tarrant County have a joyful holiday by providing a $50 tax-free gift certificate for each child for  clothing from Old Navy Stores.

“I would be so appreciative for anything you can offer my kids,” Shivonda said.

About 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 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 find out more, or to learn more about helping, visit www.goodfellowfundfw.com. The post office box for donations and correspondence is P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth, TX. 76101