Kindness Krew devoted to year-round Christmas spirit
Judy Martens remembers a time when she retired as executive director of the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce. She had nothing but time on her hands … and she couldn’t take it.
Judy Martens remembers a time when she retired as executive director of the Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce. She had nothing but time on her hands … and she couldn’t take it.
“I couldn’t just stop,” she recalls. “And we need to do things for the community, I believe in that. So I put together the Kindness Krew.”
Created to help organizations help the com- munity throughout the year, the Kindness Krew has geared up for the Christmas holidays. On Wednesday, the women who comprise the group were at Northeastern Health System Sequoyah to decorate the Christmas tree in the hospital lobby. But they didn’t just trim the tree with the usual yuletide adornments. They filled the boughs with ornaments handmade by the children at Liberty Elementary School.
“We’ve done several things for the hospital. We totally remodeled the mammogram room, and made it much more appealing and warm and welcoming. We did the same thing for the hospice family room — we totally remodeled it. Then we did some things in the hospice patient room,” Martens says.
Now the women are on to their next project.
“We’re very active with Pastors Fellowship. We help with the Back-to-School event. Next week, we’re basically in charge of all of the gifts out at the fairgrounds,” Martens says of the Christmas outreach that provides about 125 meal baskets for area families, as well as about 300 gifts for children.
“That’s two of our main events that we do.”
The Kindness Krew will be putting together goody bags for children participating in the Sallisaw Police Department’s “Shop with a Cop” promotion, and has plans to create a clothes closet for the hospital.
There was a time not long ago that the activities of the Kindness Krew ground to a halt due to COVID-19. But once the pandemic subsided, the group’s calendar began to fill up again.
“We just believe in blessing our community and blessing the people. That’s our main goal, to try to be a blessing in some way to others,” Martens says. “If there’s organizations that need a helping hand, we’d love for them to call on us. And if we can help, we will.”
