On Saturday, Aug. 22, the members of the Athol Congregational Church put on a ham and bean supper in support of the Athol Orange Rotary Club’s project to donate a fully-equipped fire truck to a less fortunate community in Mexico.
This spring, Rotary members and other community advocates came up with a plan to honor a family that had moved to the community. Originally natives of Ayutla, Mexico, who immigrated to the United States legally and opened Los Agaves Grill on Main Street in Athol, Cesar and Nubia quickly wove themselves into the fabric of the community and built a restaurant that was a centerpiece of the downtown revitalization.
“Members of our club sat down and figured out a way to repay a family that has given our community so much.” stated Tim Bowen, vice president of the Athol Orange Rotary Club. “Because this couple’s oldest son had attended the fire academy and become a certified firefighter and subsequently went to school and became an emergency medical technician, we thought it would be more than fitting if we gave back to their old community more up to date fire apparatus. They gave us a better community so we decided to give them a better community.”
The Athol Congregational Church volunteered to host a ham and bean supper on Saturday night. Attendees were served a plate of ham, homemade baked beans, macaroni and cheese and a vegetable casserole capped off by a dessert of pudding cake with ice cream.
Money raised by this event will go to buy further lifesaving equipment to outfit the fire truck, which will be shipped to Mexico in early September, to be delivered to the community during its yearly festival.
The project, named Operation Fire Taco by the son of the owners who is presently a firefighter in Brattleboro Vermont, as well as a member of the call fire departments in Phillipston and Royalston, began with the idea of getting other of his fire colleagues to go to Mexico to train the community’s firefighters.
“We couldn’t do no less.” Bowen said. “They have contributed so much. We’re going to give this much back.”