Sedalia Sacred Heart Key Club makes stockings for military
Stockings were hung with care at Whiteman Air Force Base (WAFB) a week before Christmas by students from Sacred Heart High School (SHS) in Sedalia.
Several students in the Sacred Heart Key Club Chapter worked together the afternoon of Dec. 18 to stuff around 100 Christmas stockings for the WAFB 509th Military Police Division.
The Key Club is sponsored by Kiwanis International. The local chapter was started a few years ago by Sedalia Kiwanis member Bob Milner.
Coordinating the project was Key Club President Amelia Schott and helping her was Megan Wingerter.
“We’re stuffing stockings with things like food and watches and gloves,” Schott explained. “Some of them will get multi-tools, and we’re going to go to Whiteman Air Force Base and actually put it on the doors for those who can’t go home for the holidays.”
Schott added the project is a community service project for the club.
“Our chapter is doing it this year for the first time,” she noted. “Usually it’s the Student Council, but we’re doing it this year.”
Wingerter said being in the club is a good opportunity to serve her community. Schott added the Key Club is sponsored by SHS Counselor Sheri Buckley.
The stocking project was coordinated by the Sedalia Area Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee that organized sponsor donations.
Sedalia Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Debra Andresen said the committee got together and planned out the project. In all, 31 individuals and businesses donated money for the items included in the stockings.
Andresen added Military Affairs member Mykel Schlotterbeck was overseeing the Sacred Heart Key Club volunteers.
“The donors, a lot of them just gave monetary donations,” Andresen explained. “Then we took that and bought all the stuff.”
She added that Schlotterbeck and the Key Club students actually went to the stores to purchase the stocking-stuffer items.
“It was a way for them to kind of figure out budgets,” Schlotterbeck said. “So, we had $500 and they had to figure out how many of this in this packaging could make enough stockings.
“We had three girls on the shopping crew,” she continued. “And then we have six delivering to the base. They’ll get to go on base and hang them from the doorknobs of their dorms.”
She added that Karl Kramer, the chair of the Military Affairs Committee, planned to meet them at the base to help with delivery.
Andresen said she was pleased with how the community “stepped up” and gave donations for the project.
Schlotterbeck noted that art students from Sacred Heart and Applewood Christian School made Christmas cards and residents from Cedarhurst made thank you cards to be placed in the stockings.
Mrs. Bemiss is a reporter for the Sedalia Democrat newspaper (sedaliademocrat.com), which published this article Dec. 18 and gave permission to republish it here.
