Preston Elks association makes hundreds of boxes for those in need

The Preston Elks Lodge is delivering hundreds of baskets to people in need this holiday season.

But they aren’t just simple food baskets. Each one includes a lot of things like a turkey, flour, sugar, macaroni and cheese, canned food items and essentials like toilet paper and hygiene items.

Most of it comes through community donations, both items and monetary donations. Cooper said the rest comes from the money they make at the yearly Father’s Day demolition derby, which is their biggest fundraiser. The money raised at that event goes to buying items to put in the boxes.

The Christmas boxes are a tradition the Elks Lodge has been doing for more than 60 years and the need continues to grow with it.

“As an Elks lodge, we’re probably one of the biggest ones in the country,” said Jim Cooper, leading knight for the Preston Elks Association. “Some of them only do about 50 baskets and we will do about 800, if not more.”

The baskets cover several counties, not just Franklin County.

“We deliver from Richmond, Utah to Soda Springs,” Cooper described. “Also out to like Downey, Dayton, Lava Hot Springs, so it’s quite the surrounding area.”

Cooper said they work with local community leaders and organizations to figure out who needs the boxes each year.

“We send out letters to bishops, other churches, things like that and they find the need in their community and they send us a list of people and that’s how we gather it up,” Cooper said. “We also get it from head start programs and also from the health department.”

And Cooper said it takes a lot of volunteers to help put it all together. From the local search and rescue crews to several local youth mutual groups, about 300 people help organize and put the boxes together.

“I come every year and I have so much fun,” said Sophi Choules, a 10-year-old volunteer. “I just come every year and help do things.”

“It’s really awesome,” said Blake Olsen, another youth volunteer. It’s fun and I see it as helping others so that’s really cool. When you see that other people don’t have quite as much as you, it’s really cool to pay that forward and give some of what you have to them.”

All the boxes will be delivered Saturday, Dec. 15. This year, the Elks group ended up doing 780 boxes.