Categories
Meetings

Charity founder to speak

Willow Drinkwater, founder of the hunger-relief organization Feed My Sheep, will be guest speaker at the February meeting of the Lake of the Woods Democratic Club.

Willow Drinkwater

The club raised $315 and a large collection of non-perishable food to donate to Feed My Sheep at its holiday luncheon in December.

The program will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8 in Classroom 2 of the Lake of the Woods Community Center. A social period will begin 30 minutes prior to the meeting.

A resident of Gordonsville, Ms. Drinkwater has been active in Democratic politics since the John F. Kennedy campaign for president while she was a student at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

She was involved in establishing the first health department in St. Lawrence County, New York, while she was vice president of the League of Women Voters in Potsdam, New York, in the 1960s.

She worked at Attica Prison after the riots in 1972, bringing community college courses into the prison. During that time she learned that 80 percent of the inmates were abused or neglected as children.

She moved to Gordonsville and worked at WJMA radio station in Orange, producing the popular programs “The Swap Shop” and “Monday at One.”

She founded the Feed My Sheep program 16 years ago.

“My mother taught me that giving is more important than receiving,” Ms. Drinkwater said.

Donations of money or non-perishable food products will be collected at the meeting for the benefit of Feed My Sheep.