By Rita McInerney

The parish center of St. Ann's parish, Marietta, was transformed Dec. 11 into an alpine range of Christmas gifts.

Large cartons packed with gift-wrapped boxes were piled high in spaces marked for each family. "Mountains: grew box by box as donors arrived with Christmas offerings. Soon the floor was crowded with cartons, bikes, sewing machines, microwave ovens. Bikes stood in packs -- sleek racing styles for boys, pastel-hued girls' bikes, little ping and white starters with training wheels. One donor purchased eight.

This was the Friday night when months of planning by members of the parish St. Vincent de Paul Conference came together. The night when all of the Christmas gifts were loaded onto four 24-foot trucks which traveled out the next morning to several destinations.

This is Christmas at St. Ann's where the SVDP Adopt-a-Family program enables parishioners to share their blessings with the poor and the lonely, young and old.

When the program began about a decade ago, 10 families were adopted. In 1992, there were more than 200 families and individuals matched with families, organizations, subdivisions and businesses.

Sally Chrow, SVDP president, talks about the program so close to her heart.

"We want validly needy people ... Not people sophisticated in ways of playing the system. We want intact families."

In the autumn she sends forms to Department of Family and Children's Services (DFACS) offices in Jackson and Banks counties. Staffers check client lists and pick those most needing assistance. Forms returned to Marietta contain names of each family member, circumstances, age, expressed needs and wishes.

Fifty families were adopted from Jackson County, 25 from Banks, 15 from Bean Creek, a small settlement of black families near Helen.

Twenty-five families were adopted at Rutland Psychoeducational Services, a state learning facility in Athens and Winterville for children who cannot function in a regular classroom setting.

"We also work with Cobb County Senior Services," Mrs. Chrow said. "The world is different outside East Cobb and many elderly live on the fringe." St. Ann's people deliver to any of the 70 recipients willing to have them come into their homes. Names of the remainder of the 200-plus families are supplied by parishioners.

Needs of the elderly are simple. Mrs. Chrow tells of a woman, 84, living alone and confined to her wheelchair, who said a parrot would be something she could talk to. A man, recently widowed, just needed paper on which to write his poetry.

The gathering night is a hectic one for Fred Key, SVDP member in charge of transportation, a role he's handled from the start of the program. He and the coordinators, Eleanor Dudek and Kathy Mawn, make sure helpers, including Father Bob Susann, MS, the pastor, load boxes on the right trucks. Traffic between the large hall and trucks backed up at two entrances gets heavy as the evening advances.

Key makes his pitch for drivers at Sunday Masses in November. This year, mindful that some drivers have difficulty with manual drive, he made a special plea for experienced truck drivers. To his amazement, 30 volunteered.

Then when he went to pick up four rental trucks from Jimmy Ware, Marietta service station operator and lay minister, he was surprised when Ware told him he was able, for the first time, to get automatic trucks!

Key said Ware always rents the trucks to St. Ann's SVDP for half price and is "always interested in what we're doing. There are a lot of good people around and they all want to help."

When the program began 10 years ago, Key said their contacts in Jackson and Banks counties were Sisters Kitty Concannon and Mary Burke, School Sisters of Notre Dame, and at the time pastoral assistants working out of Clarksville. They had sent directions on how to get to Jefferson but he was still a little uncertain.

As the truck approached Jefferson he found Sister Kitty had posted herself outside town and placed others at intervals along the road to wave him in. Each year the two nuns tried to have someone from each family on hand at the VFW hall in Jefferson to help unload the cartons in human chain fashion.

On Dec. 12, Father Susann, a second-year volunteer, rode to Jefferson with the trucks carrying Christmas to families in Jackson and Banks counties. Many were waiting to help unload the gifts while others sang Christmas carols as they waited outside the VFW hall.

He had warm praise for everyone involved in the Christmas program and expressed the hope "that it is giving witness to what the Church is all about."

When he arrived three years ago, Father Gene Barrette, MS, parochial vicar, found the scene in the huge parish center inspiring.

He marveled at the program which "provides a concrete way for St. Ann's people to look beyond our east Cobb boundaries and to be in touch with a reality that can often seem unreal to people in this area -- the reality of poor families, poor individuals. Adopt-a-Family is not only a gift to the families who receive gifts - but very much to the families giving the gifts."

In one section of the hall, Donna Conklin, director of pre-school and Mothers Morning Out at St. Ann's, checked to make sure all the cartons going to the family the two groups adopted are numbered properly. This family had a bad luck year. Parents and all five children were involved in a head-on collision in April three of the children suffered injuries requiring body casts. The car was wrecked and both mother and father lost their jobs because they had no transportation. Her sixth child is on the way.

"They are people very willing to work," Mrs. Conklin was told by DFACS staffers in Jackson County. It wasn't hard to mobilize teachers and children to help. Notes were sent home to parents asking that each child bring a can of food. Response was wonderful. One family donated $200. Many sent bags of food, other were generous with cash. One of the features of adopting a family is to supply food, all of the canned variety, for a festive Christmas dinner. Canned hams are suggested as being suitable for the main dish.

The DFACS worker told Mrs. Conklin of the family's needs. A car topped the list. An anonymous parishioner donated a 1983 Subaru station wagon. The family needed a sofa for their trailer home. Sally Chrow found one. The mother had no maternity clothes. A teacher passed on what she had used. Someone no longer needed a portacrib, another had an idle bassinet.

Each of the five children received "three or four new outfits," Mrs. Conklin said. There were toys for the younger children, even a little red wagon. The teenagers received cassette players and country music tapes. There was ample food for Christmas dinner and beyond.

Everything new was gift-wrapped. A note accompanied nearly new items: "If you can't use these, pass them along."

Family and friends were helpful, Mrs. Conklin mentioned, in supplying all the needs of the family. Along with the presents, there was a gift certificate good for several hundred dollars worth of Wal-Mart merchandise.

"I just wish I could see their face" when they receive the gifts, the outgoing Mrs. Conklin remarked.

Amid all the lively bustle, Rusty Mawn, incoming president of SVDP, waits for orders to go out and buy more hams. Some food boxes may lack this essential item. He talks about the job Eleanor Dudek and his wife Kathy have, matching up needy families and donors. When it's too much for one family to adopt a large family, the two coordinators put together donor combinations for maximum generosity.

Priests new to the parish, Mawn said, hear about the Christmas program, but find it hard to believe even when they see the scope of the giving. "We're able to reach out because this is a very generous parish."

This generosity has even more expressions. Hundreds of warm coats and jackets are collected in the November drive for distribution in the same areas where the Christmas convoys go.

Shoes are always needed but used shoes are not collected. Instead social workers take the families shoe shopping with a wad of $25 checks from SVDP. This year, Sally Chrow signed checks in excess of $6,000.

The new shoes are funded through the monthly SVDP collection. "We beg at the doors" Mrs. Chrow volunteered, and through gifts as high as $1,000 from parishioners.

"We've never not had what we needed," she said of the 10-year program.

One result of the far-flung giving is mentioned by Kathleen Sweeney, a social worker at the Rutland School.

"It helps our families believe in people. They find someone cares who for them, someone who doesn't have to." This makes it easier for staff members to develop trust with the parents. "They are charged, like a battery, to work with us for their children."

The Rutland centers serve families in a 10-county area, most living at or below poverty level. The facility made its connection with St. Ann's when a parishioner served as an intern there several years ago.

"The families are overwhelmed with the generosity," Ms. Sweeney said.