Feb 21, 2019 3 min read

The sweetness of a few volunteers with the City Mission a quarter-century ago has gone a long way.

City Mission’s annual “Sweet Sunday” festival – an event that has grown every year since it first began 25 years ago – will be held this Sunday afternoon at the Printscape Arena in Southpointe. Over those years, it’s turned into one of the area’s premier winter events for families, attracting more than 3,000 guests in 2018.

But it never would have happened without the passion of a few dedicated volunteers with an idea and the tenacity to make it work.

City Mission board members Cindy Pfrimmer and Phyllis Ross began meeting regularly to think of ways to raise money for the nonprofit in Washington that offers homeless people a safe place to stay. In just two months, the women had planned the first “Sweet Sunday” with the help of friends Isabelle Holzapfel and Helen Colletti.

None of this was easy, of course, and it nearly didn’t happen.

The manager of a Meadow Lands hotel donated the banquet space, allowing the group to find a home for “Sweet Sunday.” They then enlisted the help of numerous local churches that were accustomed to organizing bake sales to donate cookies and other desserts that would surely attract a crowd.

Still needing an army of workers to staff the event, many residents living at the City Mission in Washington offered to help.

“The residents were very involved. We had such creative people,” Pfrimmer said. “They hand-painted every sign. They hand-stuffed thousands of envelopes. It was great to see the volunteers working right alongside the residents.”

They expected 500 people to attend that first year. Instead, it attracted more than 1,500. The annual event has more than doubled in attendance ever since.

The work of those pioneering women shows the power of volunteerism.

It also could be a lesson for all of us about the importance of volunteering. And it doesn’t even have to reach the level of the wildly successful “Sweet Sunday” or other similar fundraisers. Whether it’s donating your time to the local library or helping a neighbor shovel out from a big snowstorm, small gestures like those can go a long way to help someone else.

That kindness might even inspire others to volunteer or help those in needs.

“It was beautiful to see the pride that the residents and the volunteers had in the work they had done,” Pfrimmer said after that first fundraiser. “That was my favorite moment of the whole thing.”

As the country seems increasingly divided over ugly national politics, there are periodic reminders about the good that many people do without recognition or pay.

Kudos to the City Mission volunteers who lifted “Sweet Sunday” into a worthwhile fundraiser, and we wish them another 25 years of success.