We find ourselves now near the end of the Holidays… at that most special time of the year for many… Christmas. A reflective time… loaded with expectations and hope. Traditions and expectations abound. Within those, we carry both joy and sorrow.
In the mobile society we have become, we are no longer bound to a single location or perhaps even to our roots. Even so, there is the yearning especially at this time of year to return to what was… to come home. Yet coming home for Christmas is often an elusive and difficult thing… sometimes a seemingly impossible thing.
This past week, I was a small part of a group of local businessmen and women that reached out to help ease the pain that can be connected with this longing to go home for Christmas. Early this fall, several of us had remembered a facility on Old Springville Road called “Three Hots & A Cot” … a shelter for homeless veterans. Now our group is a small group with limited means but we wanted to do something outside of our own self-interests to make a difference… We decided that we were a good match for this group and so we began our Christmas project… a first for our little group.
We managed to gather quiet an impressive collection of needed items… enough that there was no doubt we would need a truck to deliver them… a real truck not just a pickup or a minivan. Several of our members made it to the presentation of these gifts to the Springville Road campus of “Three Hots & A Cot.” They now have 4 homes housing homeless veterans… both men and women.
In speaking with Buddy and Lynn, the managers of the Springville Road home, we received not only gracious thanks but also a reminder that their needs extended beyond the holidays… that their proverbial cupboards would be bare again in February.
And so it is planted in our minds that perhaps our support should be more than seasonal… I feel certain that will be the choice made at our January business meeting. Perhaps you may want to help as well… so I’ve provided below contact information… or call me, I’ll be glad to tell you more.
JD Simpson, President & CEO
Three Hots & A Cot
300 81st Street South
Birmingham, AL 35206
(205) 202-5124
Cell: (205) 306-4761
www.cotsforvets.org
More than seventy years ago Thomas Wolfe wrote: “You can’t go home again.” Despite that observation that many now accept as fact, we carry with us our memories of home… Distorted and exaggerated as they may be, they have become our home, at least until we can construct a new set or memories in the homes that we build.
I hope you will make it home for Christmas.
May the Market be with you.
