 The Rotary Club of Pikeville is currently accepting donations for their second annual Christmas drive for nursing home residents. The idea for this effort, which hopes to offer help and support to nursing home residents in need in our area this holiday season, was originally put forth by Rotary Club treasurer Eva Stewart. We sat down with Stewart early on Wednesday to find out more about these fundraising efforts as well as her initial inspiration for this charitable endeavor. This year we're doing the nursing home Christmas drive event, this is her second annual drive. Last year it started as something I wanted to do to honor my father. My father passed away in March of April 2020. Just right after the pandemic and everything shut down and anybody that's gone through losing their parent, you know, that grief is pretty hard on you and my father I remembered him whenever he was a deacon in his church. He loved going to the nursing homes and visiting those people and he would pray and sing and just visit you know and that was always been close to my heart so I thought well I'll do something to you know get some gifts to the nursing home so that was close to my home and so with that I talked to a Pikeville Rotary Club because I knew I needed more help than what I could do and after talking with them they graciously accepted helping me do that and actually grew into let's help as many people as we can, let's see how many nursing homes are in Pike County, it ended up being four and it just blossomed into this terrific event that we had and we talked to our community about donations and things like that and within three weeks we raised about $12,000 for these nursing home residents. We actually were going to start delivering gifts next Friday to our Phelps nursing home and then on the 15th we'll be going to Pikeville and to Parkview and then on the 16th we're going to be going to Elkhorn so we've got a lot to do in the next couple of weeks and while we've had some tremendous support from the community we do need a lot more help. During our meeting we also spoke with Rotary Club member and former club president Greg Dempsey. Dempsey stated that the need for donations whether monetary or otherwise is usually high for nursing home residents this time of year. He mentioned that there are multiple drop-off locations around town where donations can be left to be delivered including the main office of community trust bank near Pikeville high school as well as the first national bank location near Cassidy Boulevard. Dempsey provided us with a list of some of the items they are in greatest need of currently while also praising the community's efforts last year with the same fundraising initiative. Bathrobes, nightgowns, pajamas, socks, books, magazines, household items, deodorant, toothbrushes, anything like that. We need a lot of everything. Last year the community really grabbed ahold of it in a really short time. It wasn't just the monetary things that we got but the amount of things people brought and Eva's team stored it here and other places and I mean it was jam-packed. We need as much as we can. I mean we're looking at 400 people plus. Can't thank people enough for the help they give us on this. It really makes a difference when you see these folks at the nursing home. Last year was pretty rough on everybody but it was especially rough on the lonely. You're the only smiling face they see outside the building. It's pretty special. Everybody needs to be a part of it. Anyone who is interested in either donating items or volunteering their time to help those in need this holiday season is welcome to contact Eva Stewart of the Rotary Club of Parkville at 6-0-6-6-1-6-1-6-1-5. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joshua Sloan.