GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Church services have been shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and members of the Glen Ridge Congregational Church haven’t been able to hold their weekly gatherings, but that hasn’t stopped the community from helping health care workers who are on the front lines fighting the disease. They’ve been putting together care packages for nurses, doctors and other hospital staff members at Clara Maass Medical Center and Mountainside Hospital, filled with drinks, snacks and encouraging notes.
“The church has a long history of helping out in the community,” Dorothy Waldt, one of the organizers and a member of the church council, said in a phone interview with the Glen Ridge Paper on April 10. “So we had to do something to help with this.”
Carol Harpster, another member of the council, has a friend who is a lactation specialist at Clara Maass. She asked what the hospital staff needed and was given a number of answers, including facial products to ease the pain that wearing medical masks for long periods of time creates. Ultimately, the Glen Ridge team landed on a combination of energy drinks, granola bars and thank-you notes.
Churchgoers and Glen Ridge residents have been assembling the packages in clear bags and dropping them off on Waldt’s front porch, or donating supplies for Waldt and her husband to make into care packages. Then John Dobbs, the church council’s president and a longtime member of the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad, delivers them to the hospitals with the rest of the squad.
“All of our staff is familiar with the hospitals,” Dobbs said in a phone interview on April 10. “Instead of pulling into the main entrance with a car, we’re in an ambulance, and they know something is going on. We all have gloves and PPE, so it’s clean. The crew in its nature is here to help the community, so it’s perfect.”
More than 1,600 care packages have been delivered to the two hospitals so far. The organizers have heard from health care workers at both facilities who have said the notes have lifted their spirits and put a smile on their faces.
“At Mountainside there’s about 1,000 people on the campus,” Harpster said in a phone interview on April 10. “So they’re making the rounds.”
There’s no goal that she, Waldt and Dobbs are hoping to reach. The collection will be ongoing as long as the crisis is.
“We want to keep delivering them until this is over,” Waldt said.
To donate to the cause, assembled care packages or supplies can be dropped off at 90 Douglas Road in Glen Ridge. More information can be found on Glen Ridge Congregational Church’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Glen-Ridge-Congregational-Church-130123248727 or by emailing grcchelpinghands@gmail.com.
“I was anticipating turnout would be on the low side and then it would peter out,” Dobbs said about donations from residents. “I was dead wrong on both counts. It’s a great community that got involved.”
Photos Courtesy of Dorothy Waldt
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