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    Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years
    Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years
    Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years
    Ebook218 pages1 hour

    Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years

    By Lauren McGregor, John Minnis and Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund

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    It started with a cartoon Forgotten, by Tom May in which a poor child, too young and innocent to understand why she had not received a Christmas present from Santa, weeps over an empty stocking. It ran on Christmas Day in 1908 in the Detroit Journal, where it caught the attention of key Detroit businessmen. Deeply moved, they entered into a solemn pact to do all within their power to prevent any Detroit child from being forgotten. In 1914, under the leadership of James J. Brady, himself a former newsboy, the Old Newsboys Goodfellow Fund of Detroit was formed. This year, the fund celebrates 100 years of making sure there is no kiddie without a Christmas. One such fortunate kiddie was retired Detroit News columnist Pete Waldmeir, a longtime Goodfellow who generously agreed to write the introduction to this book, Old Newsboys Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 2014
    ISBN9781439647042
    Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit: 100 Years
    Author

    Lauren McGregor

    Lauren McGregor and John Minnis are coauthors of Images of America: Michigan State Fair. McGregor is a Michigan State University graduate and magazine editor, and Minnis has more than 25 years of experience as a publisher, editor, and journalist. Images included are courtesy of Wayne State University�s Walter P. Reuther Library, the Detroit Historical Society, the Brady family, the Old Newsboys� Goodfellow Fund of Detroit archives, and generations of Old Newsboys� Goodfellows.

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      Book preview

      Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit - Lauren McGregor

      time.

      INTRODUCTION

      Detroit Goodfellows founder and patriarch James J. Brady did not act like any tax collector that most destitute folks who lived in the early part of the 1900s had ever met. He had a big heart, and he knew that if it was spent the right way, at the right time, and on the right people, money could buy happiness.

      A dapper gentleman who, like dozens of other urchins before him, had hawked local newspapers on downtown street corners as a youth, Brady headed the federal revenue collection service in his hometown prior to World War I. He got around a lot in his job, and he was keenly aware of the struggles families were having finding employment and raising kids.

      Christmas is always particularly trying for the poor. Brady’s interest in finding some way to help had been influenced by a 1908 holiday season illustration drawn by artist Thomas May for the old Detroit Journal. It was entitled Forgotten, and it depicted a little girl, alone at Christmas, ragged and sobbing in a grimly furnished attic room. Asked why he had drawn it, May said he wanted to spoil Christmas for every man and woman in Detroit who had remembered only themselves.

      The May cartoon stuck in the minds and hearts of Detroit readers, including Jim Brady. But the tax man was not really motivated until another newspaper artist, Burt Thomas, in 1914 drew a holiday illustration for the Detroit News that portrayed an obviously affluent gentleman walking hand in hand with a raggedly clothed newsboy while taking Christmas gifts to needy kids.

      The drawing, which Thomas had titled The Boy He Used to Be, went viral—if there was such a thing in 1914. Brady sought advice on how he could help kids, and Detroit News’s managing editor E.J. Pipp suggested that he enlist the aid of the Detroit Newsboys Association, a group of adults who as hustling youngsters had hawked the papes for pennies on street corners and had later gone on to success in business, professions, and politics when they had grown up.

      The plan was to have these men return to their old corners for one day each year before Christmas and sell papers for any amount you care to pay, with buyers encouraged to be as generous as possible. That group formed the genesis of the present day Old Newsboys’ Goodfellow Fund of Detroit. The fundraiser tradition endures today with the annual Goodfellows newspaper street Sales Day each year on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

      In 1914, the Brady bunch collected a couple of thousand dollars, which the originator spent to buy gifts for a small number of needy kids. Over the years, however, the Detroit Goodfellows organization has evolved into arguably the nation’s foremost all-volunteer, nonprofit Christmas charity, having raised and spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of needy children.

      It also may be the nation’s—and certainly Michigan’s—most-copied Christmas charity. Over the century since the original Detroit Goodfellows first hit the streets, literally dozens of similar groups have sprung up across the state, many even borrowing the popular Goodfellows name. As Goodfellows members migrated across the country, many others have taken the idea and the name with them.

      Despite the constantly expanding competition, however, the Detroit Goodfellows have managed to blossom and prosper. Through depressions and prosperity, bull markets and bear, war and peace, over the last 100 years the Goodfellows not only have fulfilled their trademark promise of No Kiddie Without a Christmas but have added free programs like emergency dental work, free shoes, summer camperships, and even a couple of college grants-in-aid.

      As Detroit Goodfellows have grown, they also have changed with the times. Once an all-male charity, the first two women—Emily Gail and Sharon Finch—were sworn in in 1975. The group’s first female president, Diane Edgecomb, was elected in 1986. Dozens of women are members and have served on the Goodfellows board of directors.

      In the early days, the group’s bylaws stated that members had to have once sold or delivered newspapers somewhere. As newspapers waned and electronic and other media took over, however, requirement for leadership has been eased considerably to permit just about anyone who ever read a newspaper to join. The group will teach members how to hawk them on Sales Day.

      Like most charities, the Goodfellows have some necessary overhead; however, the bulk of it is paid from endowments and investments overseen by the volunteer directors. There is just one paid full-time employee: an executive director. The 15 directors all pay their own way.

      The number of Christmas gift packages the Detroit Goodfellows distribute each year has mushroomed from James Brady’s small stack of toys to more than 35,000 gaily-wrapped boxes at an annual cost of more than $1.2 million. Likewise, the contents also gradually have evolved to serve changing generations of recipients. During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, families needed food as well as clothes, but children preferred toys to coal for the stove. The Goodfellows did their best to satisfy both needs.

      In more modern times, boxes have been packed according to the age and gender of the recipients and include clothing, books, toys, candy, dental care materials, and perhaps a clock or a pocket calculator. Hundreds of volunteers annually dress more than 11,000 dolls for the younger age groups. In addition, a portion of the Goodfellows’ $1.2 million annual budget is used to send hundreds of inner-city kids to summer day camps and provides thousands of dollars in vouchers for free shoes from a local supplier and free emergency dental work for a hundred or more kids.

      For years and years, Detroit police have assisted the Goodfellows by delivering the Christmas packages; and they still do. Only, the organization now has a sophisticated computer system for identifying needy families and taking applications. Once the applications are approved, the packages are sent to distribution centers in Detroit and a few close-in suburbs and handed out from there by police and volunteers.

      No Kiddie Without a Christmas is not just a slogan. For 100 years, it has been a goal that every member of the Old Newsboys’ Goodfellow Fund of Detroit strives each year to meet. And to a person, man or woman volunteer, they all share the same fervent wish that someday poverty will vanish and they won’t be needed any

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