Hookers donate needed supplies to Pine Island Elementary
About a dozen tables were piled high with school supplies – pencils, spiral notebooks, composition books, filler paper, Elmer’s glue, crayons, folders, erasers, scissors and 250 pencil bags from Sallee Promotions.
“Oh, wow,” Pine Island Elementary Principal Steve Hook said, seeing all the supplies piled up at the school last week. “This is really amazing. I was told about this but didn’t expect all of this. I can’t tell you how much this means to our students.”
“These supplies were collected from the businesses on Pine Island and Matlacha,” Matlacha Hooker Lorie Tidwell said. “We place bins at local businesses and people drop off supplies. Then we collect the bins. We have ring binders, highlighters, pens, pencils … everything students need for the coming school year. Everyone puts in a lot of hard work and helped tremendously to put this together.”
“Look at all of this,” Hook said. “Everything the children need is right here. Our kids know they can start school with the supplies they need, ready to learn, ready to start a new year, and not have to worry about anything. Thank you all so very much.
“The way this works is we let the teachers know that if any student needs anything at all just send them down,” Hook said. “If a student has nothing we give them a backpack and all of the supplies on the list. If they only need filler paper then that’s what they get. No student goes without.”
In addition to the school supplies, some individuals also donate cash. This allows the Hookers to purchase supplies to fill in the gaps where there is a shortage of pencils or notebook paper, for example.
The Matlacha Hookers were founded in 1998 by 21 women. Their goal and motto was, and still is, to “make a positive difference in the community.” Over 1,000 members have signed up over the years. The Hookers began raising money with a fund-raising fishing tournament the first year and have been holding them every year since (with the exception of 2004 due to Hurricane Charley).