| Lafarge sets tables for 400 households |
| Wednesday, 25 November 2009 15:14 |
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Cement co. leads giveaway of boxed meals by Randy Leonard Last weekend, the aggregate and slurry they delivered were stuffing and mashed potatoes. As it has for nearly two decades, a Sparrows Point cement manufacturer helped make Thanksgiving dinner possible for hundreds of families this year. “Four hundred baskets are going out this year,” Lafarge Building Materials plant administrator MaryLou Sieber, who has coordinated the annual donation event for 19 years, said last week. “We first started it with 11 baskets,” when the plant was owned by Blue Circle, she said. The last two years saw donations to more than 300 families, but this year’s giveaway “is the biggest of all,” Sieber said.  On Saturday, about 40 volunteers from Lafarge, Techalloy Welding Products in Essex and the community turned up at the Box N Save on Dundalk Avenue, where manager John Geisler has been filling the large holiday order for 15 years.Boxed meals and turkeys were loaded up and taken to schools in Dundalk, Edgemere, Rosedale, Essex and Baltimore City to be distributed to families in need identified by the schools. Millers Island resident and North Point Peninsula Community Coordinating Council president Harry Wujek was among the volunteers handing out boxed meals at Edgemere Elementary.  “I think it’s a wonderful thing that they do,” he said Monday. He enjoyed being involved, he said. “It was a great experience.”Families facing unemployment and those flooded by the September water main break at Broening Highway contributed to the “higher need” this year, Sieber said. The schools identify the families in need, she said. Sieber coordinates monetary donations from area businesses, which this year funded just over half of the 400 baskets. Lafarge donated the other half.
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