WILLOW CREEK — The town of Willow Creek has formed a formal relief committee to coordinate the distribution of food, firewood, and clothing to families of unemployed mill workers, as the Depression enters its second year with no sign of relief.
The committee, chaired by James O’Donnell, the General Store proprietor who has been extending credit to nearly every family in town, will meet every Tuesday evening at the Community Hall. Its members include Ezra Homan representing the mill workers, Martha Pendelton of the Congregational Church’s Ladies’ Aid Society, and Dr. Henry Albright, the town physician.
The need is urgent. According to O’Donnell’s ledgers, more than forty families in Willow Creek are currently receiving credit for their basic provisions — flour, salt pork, coffee, sugar, and kerosene. The total outstanding debt exceeds $1,200, a sum that O’Donnell has carried without interest since the mill’s slowdown began in the autumn of 1930.
“I do not keep a ledger to know who will pay and who will not,” O’Donnell told the Gazette. “I keep a ledger because a merchant must keep a ledger. But I can tell you this: I have known these families my entire life. They will pay when they can. And until then, they will eat.”
The relief committee’s first action has been to organize a wood-cutting party. On Saturday, thirty men — most of them mill workers with time on their hands — will gather at the Farr family woodlot to cut and split firewood for distribution to families who have exhausted their winter supplies. The woodlot’s owner, Henry Farr Sr., has donated the timber free of charge.
“This is what we do in a small town,” said O’Donnell. “When a man cannot work, his neighbors work for him. When a family cannot pay, the merchant carries them. When the winter is cold, we cut wood together. It is not charity. It is the way we live.”
The committee is also coordinating with the Aroostook County Potato Growers’ Association, which has pledged a donation of 500 pounds of potatoes for distribution. The Maine Department of Agriculture has contributed a shipment of surplus apples from the Oxford County crop.
Dr. Albright, who has treated several cases of malnutrition in children over the past three months, has prepared a pamphlet on economical nutrition that will be distributed through the committee. His primary recommendation: “A diet of potatoes, milk, and eggs, supplemented with whatever game or fish a man can take, will sustain a family through the winter. It is not a varied diet, but it is a sufficient one.”
The Gazette adds its own recommendation: that those who are able contribute cash or goods to the relief committee’s efforts. Donations may be left at the General Store or at the Gazette office.