In charitable organizations, a drive is a collection of items for people or groups who need them[1].
Bellairs Corpus[]
- An effort is made in the 1950s to finish the Cathedral of Saint Gorboduc by allowing the pennies of Catholic school children to fund completion of the ancient church (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 36).
- Arthur "Dutch" Wolohan writes to the question box that his kids keep pestering him for money to ransom pagan babies (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 41).
- Mother Ximenes' Handbook for Grade School Nuns features a section that suggests fundraising ideas: "Raffle Your Grandmother Out of Purgatory," having drives (paper, bottle caps, jelly jars), and selling sick-call kits (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 108).
- Johnny Dixon and the children of Saint Michael's School scour the community of Duston Heights for newspapers and other paper products (The Curse of the Blue Figurine, 64).
Commentary[]
"Ransoming pagan babies" was an expression nuns would use when soliciting donations for the Catholic missions. "The dimes and quarters contributed by the school kids would support mission schools in benighted jungle regions, where the pupils would be converted and their souls saved for Jesus. Thus the money was likened to a ransom paid to free their souls from the clutches of the devil.[2]"
"Remember, that Bellairs and I started going to school in 1943, right at the height of the Second World War. Paper drives were a big deal then; I also remember stomping tin cans flat and bringing them in, too. Everybody did this type of thing during the war; schools, the Boy Scouts, and so on.[3]”
"There was a period after WWII when scrap paper was worth enough money to make it worthwhile to collect and sell. There were drives of various kinds during the war also, but that was for a contribution to the War Effort, not to raise money. We used to go out every year and fill bags with milkweed pods, which were said to be useful in some way for making lifeboats and life jackets. I don't know if this was true or not – since upon reaching Man's Estate I have also heard that a lot of the efforts and sacrifices the public was called on to make were done for the sake of morale rather than the proceeds of said efforts and sacrifices. As for whether they were very common in parochial schools, I suppose they were, as these schools were always running on a shoestring.[2]"
Reference[]
- ↑ Wikipedia: Drive (charity)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Correspondence with Charles Bowen.
- ↑ Correspondence with Alfred Myers.
| 11. Mother Ximenes’ Handbook for Grade School Nuns | |
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Handbook • Charity drives • May Procession |
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