Editorial

The 101st Year

Since 1921, “The Freeman’s Journal” has sponsored a Christmas Fund drive to help our local families in need, assisting them in putting clothes on their children, food on their tables and presents under their trees at a time when it seemed the holiday season would leave them bereft and out of the festive swirl of things. The fund was created by Rowan D. Spraker, Sr., then the editor and publisher of “The Freeman’s Journal,” and it was intended as a Christmas gift to area residents in need who were unable to provide a holiday for their children, families, and, in some instances, animals.

Spraker no doubt got his decidedly brilliant idea from “The New York Times,” whose publisher in 1911, Adolph S. Ochs, was out on a walk on Christmas Day and met a man in tattered clothes. The man told Ochs that although he had been able to have a meal at the YMCA, he had nowhere to sleep that night. Ochs decided that The Times should use its pages to give back to its community, and the following year the paper published 100 short accounts of people who were struggling to provide for themselves and their families. The agencies that were already helping these people were mentioned, and the Times suggested that its readers donate to those organizations. It worked, and today the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is still going strong, helping the city’s neediest—and others around the globe—to the tune of $330 million since its beginning.