by Mary Rupert
The Reola Grant Center in Kansas City, Kan., has overcome an obstacle, and the group now is planning a fundraiser festival in October featuring a car show and wife carry.
The event is planned from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, at Lakeside Speedway, 5615 Wolcott Drive, Kansas City, Kan.
The unusual title of the event is “Cops, Cars, Bike Show and Wife Carry (Fireman’s Challenge).”
The Reola Grant Center, which is a food pantry, recently moved to 5010 Leavenworth Road at the Ussery Body Shop, where the food pantry is open by appointment only. The Ussery shop has been supporting this charitable effort for about 20 years, according to Janice Witt, director of the Reola Grant Center. Several other businesses also are supporting the Reola Grant Center, including Keith’s Transmission, Baker’s Tow, Christy’s Tasty Queen and Lakeside Speedway.
Witt said the group’s motivation for holding the fundraiser was the recent loss of about 7,000 pounds of frozen meat. Funds for it have now been replaced, she said.
A food distribution that was planned last Saturday had to be canceled, she said, affecting about 150 families. Harvesters was late on the delivery and Witt was late on the pickup, she said, and with the rain on Saturday, it was too difficult to accomplish. The center’s backup food stored in a freezer had gone bad, so freezer food was not yet available to distribute, she added. There are plans to continue the food distribution in the future, she added. Usually it is on the third Saturday of the month.
There is a great deal of need in the community, she agreed. Usually, the center serves around 2,500 persons a month.
Witt noted that it is people who are in the middle class, or the former middle class, and the working class that she sees now at food distributions. Some of them live in a nice home, she said. They are not homeless, and Witt said she hopes a little bit of food assistance will help keep them from being homeless. They are mostly trying to just pay their bills, and for some reason, their bills have increased, she said.
The bills increase when, for example, one of the members of the family got sick and the family did not receive the same amount of funds this month, she said. Maybe someone is laid off. Or, sometimes it is that a family is taking care of an elderly parent, or has an unexpected expense that comes up. She sees a lot of different faces every month, she added. She said that the food pantry also serves any homeless people who come to the food distribution.
The Reola Grant Center, a small nonprofit run by Janice and Ron Witt, only asks people to make a statement that they need food, and asks for their identification, she said. She acknowledges there might be a few people who are there who are not truly needy, “but I will give to them to get to the one that truly needs me,” she said.
Last year the group held a car show for its annual fundraiser event, and this year, it is adding the “wife carry” event. It is an officially sanctioned event, by the North American Wife Carrying Association, Witt said. It’s pretty much what it sounds like – one person carries another person in a race to the finish line.
Registration to participate in the event is $60 per couple, with the funds going to the Reola Grant Center, and participants getting T-shirts. The winner of the contest gets the wife’s weight in beer, Witt added.
Quite a few car clubs have signed up for the car show, she said, and many couples have signed up for the wife carry event, some coming from as far away as Wisconsin.
Witt expects quite a few police and firefighters to attend the event, and some will be participants in events. The entry fee for cars and motorcycles in the car show is $30. Everyone who pays an entry fee will receive a beer and a T-shirt.
While there are fees for those who participate in the show or the contests, there is no admission charge for people who are just there to watch, she said. There will be food and drink provided by vendors.
“It’s all about fun and the renewal of community,” Witt said.
For more information about the center, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReolaGrantCenter/.
For more information about the event, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/181487815608055/.
https://www.facebook.com/events/181487815608055/?active_tab=posts
https://runsignup.com/Race/KS/KansasCity/WifeCarryKC Registration for the Wife Carry Obstacle Course