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Sep 13, 2017

Waco Church Honors First Responders on Eve of 9/11 Anniversary

First responders come to mind especially at the anniversary of 9/11. Holy Spirit, Waco paid tribute to their local first responders in memory of those who lost their lives during the terror attacks of 9/11 in New York and Washington as well as in honor of those who continue to experience health problems from attempting to save victims of the terror attacks. 

Bill Bauer (right) with the crew at the oldest firehouse in the City.  Bill has been tireless in his support of Holy Spirit's outreach and chaired our Capital Campaign Committee.
Parishioners Lynn Roberts, Karen Augeri, Joyce Stokes, and Mindy Wilkins were responsible for preparing the pans of fixins' that accompanied the meals for each site.

According to Karen O’Bric, Holy Spirit’s community life coordinator, “Seventy-six volunteers prepared and delivered 343 meals to 13 fire stations, police and dispatchers on duty at the Waco Department, to prison guards and to two hospital emergency room staffs on Sunday, September 10.  Each box lunch, prepared by parishioners included a note of thanks from the church. 

“To a man, our firefighters were effusive in expressing their appreciation,” O’Bric said. “Our volunteers were given tours of the firehouses and, in the case of those who had their children with them, the men showed them all their equipment and let them sit in their fire trucks.” 

The hot dogs and hamburgers were grilled by the church’s men’s group and more volunteers gathered to help with logistics of delivering to so many locations, making sure things arrived hot/cold as appropriate. O’Bric said parishioners scheduled their deliveries to make sure they could worship at their preferred service on Sunday morning, and all experienced great response. Meals were loaded into banana boxes for delivery. “We had one parishioner who did noting else but go to HEB every day for more than a month picking up banana boxes to make transportation easier,” she said. 

Harlan Williams, Easton Allen, and Bill Dyer are part of the Men's Group and spent 4 hours barbecuing all the meat on Saturday.  Bill came in early Sunday morning to warm everything ahead of delivery.
Judy Lloyd and Monique Ingalls were two of 23 volunteers who gathered on Saturday afternoon to fill 343 meal boxes and separate them into groups based on the head count of on-duty personnel I received from each site. I have additional pictures if you would like those.

“This was an epic undertaking for the big deliveries: Waco PD (120 meals), the prison (70 meals) and the two ER's (40 meals each).  Meal delivery started at 10:15.  Every meal was delivered by 12:15,” O’Bric said.