Providing financial ‘relief’ for back-to-school expenses
Roosevelt McKnight Jr. has only been the commander of American Legion McCulloch-Wagner Post 109 in Vail, Ariz., for around one month. But he’s already made an impact, as seen by the post’s most recent attempt to support its community.
On July 20, Post 109 spearheaded with the Corona De Tucson Fire District, a local business and other members of the community to fill one of the fire department’s new trucks with school supplies. The contents of the truck are for students in the Vail School District.
“I was looking at this being an annual event,” McKnight said. “But we have a couple teachers that go to our post, and they said it would really be good to make it a semi-annual event. But my plan is for it to be at least annual.”
McKnight said he knows this time of year can create a financial strain on parents with school-age children. “We have worked before with the (ReSources) Vail Food Bank,” he said. “One of the things in working with the food bank … is they were telling me they have seen an uptick in the amount of families coming through, and in particular, the amount of veteran families struggling. So that was in the back of our minds.
“But we wanted to extend it out. If we have families and there’s an uptick in families needing food assistance, maybe we can take this on and get our community to come together and this post to come together and provide some relief for returning to school for some of these families.”
In addition to teaming with the fire district, Post 109 also invited Caffeine Dealer, a local coffee shop and food truck, to take part in the event. A local Boy Scout troop helped with the effort and also provided a pancake breakfast.
The post was able to collect backpacks, pencils and pins, paper, hand sanitizer and other items. McKnight then reached out to the school system to find out when he could drop off the items, and that’s when he found out a news team from News 4 in Tucson – which conducted an unrelated supply drive two days after Post 109’s – was there to get video of the supply drop-off. But instead, McKnight ended up being interviewed about the post’s effort. Watch the video here.
McKnight said the success of the drive, “exceeded any expectations that I had. But I think we have a really good footprint and a good relationship with this community. The (Corona De Tucson Fire District) fire chief said that this is the beginning of a very different relationship with them. And both of his grandfathers were World War II veterans, and he didn’t know he was eligible for membership. So we’ve picked up a new member (in the Sons of The American Legion).”