For several years, Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga) has been working with Smithtown-based SMM Advertising and Retired Volunteer Services Programs (RSVP) to conduct a winter coat drive to provide coats to various organizations that provide services to people in need or who reside in shelters and could use warm winter clothing. They are collecting gently used or new coats, jackets, hats, gloves, mittens, scarves and new socks for infants, children, teens and adult men and women.
“Due to COVID-19, many residents have lost their jobs or have had their hours reduced. As people prepare for the winter and clean out their closets or plan to give a new coat as a gift, it is important for all of us to help our fellow neighbors who need warm coats by contributing to this drive. Many people are still dealing with the impact that the pandemic has had on their lives,” said Leg. Trotta.
Donations of coats and other outerwear may be dropped off at Leg. Trotta’s district office, located 59 Landing Avenue, Suite 1, (Blue Door) in Smithtown, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The coat drive ends January 7, 2022. For directions or questions, please call Legislator Trotta’s office at 631-854-3900.
For several years, Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta has been working with Smithtown based SMM Advertising and Retired Volunteer Services Programs (RSVP) to conduct a winter coat drive to benefit the residents of Suffolk County who are in need of warm winter clothing.
They are collecting gently used or new coats, jackets, hats, gloves, mittens, scarves and new socks for infants, children, teens and adult men and women.
“Due to COVID-19, many residents have lost their jobs or have had their hours reduced. As people prepare for the winter and clean out their closets or plan to give a new coat as a gift, it is important for all of us to help our fellow neighbors who need warm coats by contributing to this drive,” said Leg. Trotta, pictured above.
Donations of coats and other outerwear may be dropped off at Legislator Trotta’s district office, located 59 Landing Avenue, Suite 1, (Blue Door) in Smithtown, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The coat drive ends January 7, 2021. For more information, call 631-854-3900.
For several years, Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga) has been working with SMM Advertising in Smithtown to conduct a winter coat drive to benefit the residents of Suffolk County who are in need of warm winter clothing. They are collecting gently used or new coats, jackets, hats, gloves, mittens, scarves and new socks for infants, children, teens and adult men and women.
“As people prepare for the winter and clean out their closets or plan to give a new coat as a gift, it is important for all of us to help our fellow neighbors who need warm coats by contributing to this worthwhile drive,” said Trotta.
Donations of coats and other outerwear may be dropped off at Trotta’s district office, located at 59 Landing Ave., Suite 1, in Smithtown, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The coat drive ends Jan. 6.
For directions, questions or if you know of an organization with an urgent need, please call Trotta’s office at 631-854-3900.
Holden Cone from Setauket sits with the bags filled with 179 coats that he collected for Long Island Cares. Photo from Christina Cone
For a 7-year-old Setauket resident, it wasn’t enough that Minnesauke Elementary School was collecting coats just for children. He felt a drive should be organized to collect outer garments for all ages and sizes, so he started one of his own.
“I thought if we do a drive for any type of coat it would help more people,” Holden Cone said.
Helping more people is exactly what the second-grader did. When his month-long coat drive ended Dec. 17, he had bags filled with 179 coats.
It all started when Holden told his parents Chauncy and Christina his idea. He said they began researching online how to organize a gently worn coat drive and found the website for the nonprofit One Warm Coat that connects those interested in conducting drives with reputable organizations. They discovered they could donate coats to the Hauppauge-based organization Long Island Cares Inc.
“We were very proud of the fact that he wanted to start something on his own and make it more inclusive, not just a kids’ drive,” his father said. “He wanted to help as many people as he could.”
Holden Cone holds the flier he and his father posted in the area and placed in neighbors’ mailboxes. Photo from Christina Cone
Holden said he and his dad hung up fliers and put 101 more in mailboxes. He also put a sign on the family’s front lawn directing contributors to place coats in a bin on the porch.
In addition, his mother said Holden spoke to her and her husband’s students at Smithtown West High School, where they are both teachers, about the drive. She said she was proud of how he presented the project and many of their students contributed to the cause.
While he hasn’t been able to meet the majority of those who donated because many just left coats on the family’s porch, Holden said one person wrote a thank you on one of his fliers. His mother said Holden was thrilled when he came home from school every day and saw more coats on the porch.
“I feel happy, because the more coats we get the more people we help in the world,” Holden said.
His mother said the family wishes they could thank everyone in person who helped with the drive.
“It’s just a testament to our community,” she said. “I was just commenting to someone the other day how I love our neighborhood. I love our neighbors. They picked up on this and then jumped right in.”
William Gonyou, community events and food drive manager for Long Island Cares, said the number of children organizing projects like Holden’s is slowly growing, and he hopes the 7-year-old’s coat drive will inspire other youngsters to do the same.
“It’s always so wonderful and humbling to hear when young children stand up for other people,” Gonyou said. “There is so much need on Long Island, and to learn of somebody so young realizing that, and choosing to do something about it is very inspiring. Students like Holden will be the future social advocates of the world, and seeing them start so early in life is a great sign of much needed changes on Long Island.”
At press time, the Cone family’s van was loaded with bags of coats, and they said they were planning to bring them to the Long Island Cares office before Christmas. When it comes to the visit, Holden said he isn’t looking for praise.
“I don’t care what they say, because I’m just happy I’m helping people,” he said.
A coat drive at Comsewogue High School resulted in about 50 coats being distributed to needy people in the Port Jefferson Station area. Photo by Alex Petroski
Residents in the Port Jefferson Station area and beyond need not be left out in the cold this winter.
A somewhat spontaneous winter coat drive sprung up in Port Jefferson Station last week thanks to the efforts of a pair of old friends: a business owner in Nassau County and an employee in the Comsewogue School District. David Jacobson, founding executive director of Collector Car Showcase in Oyster Bay started Layers of Love NY with his longtime friend John Worobey, who provides technology support at Comsewogue, working in the district for 17 years. The organization, which is referred to on its website as a movement, was the byproduct of a brief conversation between the friends earlier this year.
“I went into a classroom last year and there was a child hanging a coat out the window in the middle of the winter,” Worobey recalled during the Oct. 28 coat drive in the Comsewogue High School cafeteria. “I asked the teacher ‘what’s going on? Why is he hanging a coat out the window?’ She said that a lot of the kids in the class didn’t have coats and people donated coats, and his happened to smell like cigarettes. So he was hanging it out the window to air out.”
Worobey said when he told Jacobson about what he had observed his friend was equally taken aback.
“During a casual conversation he said to me some kids come to school with no coats on in the middle of the winter,” Jacobson said. “I was like ‘that’s not okay.’”
Jacobson said they decided they would host a coat drive later in the year and began collecting coats through a variety of avenues. He said they placed Layers of Love NY collection boxes at car dealerships around Long Island; and at The Hoffman Center in Muttontown, a museum named after Maximilian Hoffman, an Austrian-born racecar driver and importer of luxury automobiles in the 1950s; among other locations. On Oct. 1 the museum hosted an event called Driven to America, at which the organization collected even more coats. Jacobson said he heard stories from people showing up to the event who had purchased as many as 10 brand new coats to contribute for the drive.
By the time the event began at Comsewogue, about 250 coats were laid out across the cafeteria tables available for anyone who walked in to look through and pick the perfect fit.
“Whatever we give away today we’re happy,” Jacobson said. The event resulted in the distribution of about 50 coats, with families with multiple children arriving throughout the morning to bundle up ahead of winter. The co-founders of the event each indicated they planned to learn from the 2017 incarnation of their vision and use the information to improve it in years to come.
“It’s a stepping stone, something we’re going to build upon,” Jacobson said.
Worobey said he thought Comsewogue was the perfect location for a coat drive like this because of the community’s inherent nature of giving.
“That makes you feel good,” Worobey said, waving to a group that had just collected several coats and were heading on their way.
Jacobson said the organization will begin collecting coats for a 2018 drive next July. Anyone interested in learning more about Layers of Love NY should visit www.layersofloveny.com.
