Community, Creswell

Sweets for a sweet cause

A little girl named Violet enjoys an ice cream sundae with sprinkles during last Friday’s Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social. Gini Davis/The Creswell Chronicle

It’s a summer tradition for many in the community – and really, with Creswell Presbyterian Women’s Association (PWA)’s annual Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social offering goodies, with proceeds supporting local missions and U.S. Disaster Relief, who can resist?
Held July 12 at Creswell Presbyterian Church, this year’s Ice Cream Social served up slices of homemade cakes, pies and cobblers, optionally topped with scoops of homemade vanilla ice cream, all made and donated by church and community volunteers.
A piece of cake sold for $2, while a slice of pie sold for $2.50; each added scoop of ice cream cost 75 cents.
”It’s called the ‘Old-Fashioned’ Ice Cream Social, and we want to keep our prices ‘old-fashioned’ so everybody can afford to come, from young families to older people on fixed incomes,” said Karen Heater, a PWA member and longtime organizer of the event.
This year’s Social raised approximately $775, reported longtime PWA treasurer, Wilma Kerr. ”We had a lot donated – probably as many donations as counted sales,” Kerr said.
For the past three years, PWA annual events – including the Ice Cream Social, Harvest Dinner, Country Store, two rummage sales and a fabric sale – have raised more than $10,000 per year for PWA missions, Kerr said. The fabric sale, added in 2018, has raised more than $1,000 each year.
Yet the question of just how much longer these dedicated volunteers will actually be able to pull off annual events like the Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social looms.
”As we’ve done different things and everything keeps growing and growing, we’re kind of proud of ourselves – but the reality is that we’re all getting older and there’s no one coming up behind us who’s willing to take over,” said Kerr, noting that Heater had been at the Fellowship Hall the entire day working on the Ice Cream Social.
But for now, they’ll just keep doing what they can in support of good causes and their community.
”We’ve talked about it and decided that even if we didn’t make as much as a fundraiser, we’d still have it and do what we could, because there’s also a social and community element that we’d miss,” Heater said.

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