It is safe to say that when a handful of undergraduates and their professors took over the kitchen at St. Mary’s Church on East Ninth Street in Erie on a winter morning in 1967, they were more concerned with feeding the hungry gathered there than with starting a beloved holiday tradition. After all, compassion was their vocation. But after tons of turkey, thousands of gifts and 40 years of time, the Gannon University Social Work Club Christmas Dinner has become one of the most welcome events on the holiday calendar. Ask Charles M. “Chuck” Murphy, associate professor of social work. He was among that small, Students Angelica Contreras and Anne but hardy group of Call volunteer as members of the Social pioneering Gannon Work Club. faculty who witnessed not only the early days of the dinner, but of the social work program itself, having come to Gannon in 1964. The face of poverty in Erie has changed in the three decades that Murphy has been involved with the dinner. “When we started this, the homeless were mostly males, and we bought them clothes at the Army Navy Store,” he remembered. “But, after a few years, the women and children came in, and it turned into a floodgate.” As the numbers of people in need increased, so did the response from the Gannon community. “I can’t tell you how many students became involved—the women’s basketball team, fraternities—and we needed more space,” Murphy recalled. “We were at the (National Guard) Armory for a while, then Cauley Auditorium (at St. Patrick’s Church) before the event officially moved to Gannon.” Moving to the Hammermill Center has given the dinner room to grow to a size unimaginable in 1967. In December 2007, nearly 500 volunteers, including about 300 Gannon students, bought and wrapped gifts, served nearly 1,000 meals, entertained children and cleaned up after the gathering. Among them was Angelica Contreras, a junior majoring in social work and the president of the Social Work Club. Born in Mexico, Contreras is the first of the nine children in her family to go to college. Had her family come to Erie instead of Los Angeles a decade earlier, she said she might have attended the dinner as a guest. “My family was low income, so I knew what that was like,” she said. “In L.A., there were 11 of us living in a one-room apartment. I never got a Christmas gift until I came to Erie. I was nine years old.”
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Contreras represents a new kind of social work major. Helping people was obviously her motivation, but she
arrived at that destination from an unusual place. “I started in medicine and realized that it was not for me.” And, she isn’t following the conventional social work career track either; she plans to attend law school. “I want to make a change, so law school seems like a smart option,” said Contreras. Coming to social work at Gannon from an unusual place is also a familiar and gratifying story for assistant professor and director of the social work department, Parris Baker, Ph.D. Dr. Baker has been involved with this dinner since his Gannon student days in the early 1990s. “We had the dinner at St. Pat’s, and we did the fundraising and wrapped the presents. Professors Charles Murphy and Tony Rao were in charge, but in name only. The students ran the event,” said Baker. “Now, we have students volunteer from all disciplines, not just social work. Three hundred volunteers come with the express purpose of finding their place within the broader social fabric and, often, the experience can change the course of a student’s life,” Baker added. “We probably get three to four students a year whose consciousness is awakened by the dinner. I just had a student who came into the program say that the dinner made it clear to him that he wanted to be a social worker.” Dr. Baker believes that students will continue to find reward as long as there are people who must rely on others in a time of need. For better or worse, Dr. Baker does not see the need for compassionate and effective social workers disappearing anytime soon. “There’s been a lot of conversation about how people must ultimately help themselves,” he explained. “But the notion of helping yourself could not have worked out in Louisiana after Katrina. We saw an outpouring of the human spirit from all over the world, but the government, unfortunately, was a little slow. People are still going down there because of a motivation to connect with people in a faraway place that compels them to be there. “I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe that sometimes people need the assistance of others.” The Hammermill Center in December was proof of the continued presence of human need and evidence that Gannon faculty, staff, and students really do care.
(opposite, from left to right) Freshmen Mary Riedy, Chelsey Klube, and Jill McAninch represent Gannon’s spirit of service while volunteering at the dinner.