Traverse City Elks Hold Mother’s Day Food Drive

The Traverse City Elk Lodge is celebrating Mother’s Day a little differently this year.

“Mother’s day we host a brunch here for mothers and their families, serving almost 400 folks and of course we knew we couldn’t do that this year,” Cindy Bates said.

 This year they wanted to what their moms taught them and give back to the community.

Bates said, ”Folks can’t honor their mothers like they usually do this year. How about honoring our mothers by giving back to others.”

 The Traverse City Elks teamed up with the Father Fred Foundation for a food drive to help those struggling during the pandemic.

“During this COVID-19 crisis people definitely need help and the food banks are low,” said Traverse City Elks’ Rich Gauthier.

“Charity is one of our principle virtues, and they are just a tremendous group of people that just came together in probably less than a week.”

 They’re doing curbside drop-offs to keep donors and volunteers safe.

Bates says, “Cars will pull up and we’ll have signs asking people to stay in their cars and our volunteers will remove the groceries from the cars and load them onto the Father Fred truck.”

 They say this is their first food drive and are already seeing support from their neighbors.

“We just got the ball rolling and it’s been really exciting, the response that we’ve gotten from the community already,” Bates said.

Elk Lodge #323 is also accepting donations at their Traverse City location on Mother’s Day from 2 p.m to 5 p.m.