Chairman Spreads Christmas Cheer to Needy Children

Residents of rural Florida cities receive early Christmas gifts

By Shelley Marmor

BELLE GLADE, FL — Although the last hurricane of the record-breaking 2004 hurricane season, Hurricane Jeanne, hit Florida back in September, many of Belle Glade’s 14,000 residents are still feeling the effects. This small town and its neighboring cities lie on Lake Okeechobee, making them very susceptible to damage from natural disasters like hurricanes.

With many families still trying to pick up the pieces, Christmas did not seem like a high priority in this small town. There were not many holiday lights hung and few festive decorations lining the streets.

However, that all changed when Chairman Mitchell Cypress arrived at the Healthy Solutions Resource Center, a community mental health center, on Wednesday, Dec. 22. Pulling up in a fire truck full of toys, he greeted about 50 Belle Glade residents with a handshake and a “Feliz Navidad,” which means Merry Christmas in Spanish.

Belle Glade is comprised of many migrant farm workers, most of which are Hispanic and do not speak fluent English. Healthy Solutions Resource Center Family Coach Advocate Diana Galan said Hispanics are the group the staff most serves; many staff members even had to learn the language just to work there.

Cypress, along with Ft. Pierce Liaison Sally Tommie, Travel and Events Coordinator Eida Velez and Seminole Firefighters Ira Goodstat, Irena Loleski and Kevin Lois assisted in passing out toys to the children of about 30 families that receive social welfare assistance through the center.

In addition to brightening the kids’ faces who received the toys, Cypress also came bearing gifts for the adults in the form of Publix® grocery store gift certificates. This gift seemed fitting as Cypress told a news crew from Channel 5 that “these are the people who put produce on our tables.”

Galan, a former Big Cypress tribal employee herself, said she has known Cypress for many years. She said he is always generous with donations to the Healthy Solutions Resource Center, however boasted because this year he went all out with the gift presentation arriving in a fire truck.

“This is the first time he personally came to deliver the donation,” Galan said.

She said this year was exceptionally challenging because the nearby city of Pahokee, also comprised mainly of migrant farm workers who live in trailers, lost everything during the hurricanes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has assisted the roughly 100 families by setting up temporary housing in the form of single-wide trailers for those who lost their homes.

Galan has made it her mission to get the word out about these peoples’ struggle.

“Every year I write to Mitchell [Cypress] asking for donations,” she said. “This year I wrote to him telling him about the families who lost their homes in the hurricane.”

After handing out toys to the people at the Healthy Solutions Resource Center, Cypress took a trip to see these adverse living conditions. A row of white trailers lined a one-lane road along Lake Okeechobee, behind them a temporary chain-link fence to keep the alligators away.

The chairman was touched when he saw an approximately two-foot tall Christmas tree outside one of the trailers decorated with white lights. With as many as five people living in a single-wide trailer, families had to improvise with space at such a premium.

Cypress made the decision to hand out the remaining toys to the children living in the trailer park. He met with many of the trailer park’s residents. Most of them offered messages of thanks telling him things like “un million de gracias” literally meaning one million thanks.