VOORHEESVILLE — Joseph Cotazino leads the Orchard Park Neighborhood Association, which has donated food to the New Scotland Community Food Pantry at Thanksgiving, and adopted a family during the December holidays, for 27 years.
“Every year, it just grows and grows,” Cotazino said. “Last year, we collected 63 turkeys. This year, we collected 70 turkeys, three hams, and five roasting chickens. The seniors like to get something smaller than a whole turkey.”

For years, the association has answered a letter from the food pantry with a solid “yes,” when asked if members will supply turkeys and food at Thanksgiving, Cotazino said.

“The Orchard Park neighbors have provided enough turkeys to our clients to not only accommodate all of the meals requested for Thanksgiving, but also all those client families who request a turkey for the December meal that community sponsors provide,” said food pantry board member Ruth Wakefield in an e-mail.

Cotazino sends letters to each of the 65 homes in his neighborhood, and asks for turkeys and meal-fixings, he said.

“They drop them off at my house in a bin,” he said. “It’s really a community effort. It’s not just me, it’s a lot of really, really generous neighbors. They look forward to it.”

He and his nearest neighbors store the turkeys in their freezers. When they have gathered 25, they take the turkeys and bags of accompanying groceries to the food pantry, Cotazino said. The association continues to collect up through the weekend before Thanksgiving, to give the food pantry volunteers time to assemble grocery gift baskets for their clients.

“There’s a real need in New Scotland,” Cotazino said. “It’s not just in the city where people need assistance. I think people don't realize there’s a lot of need in this area. People have fallen on some hard times.”

The food pantry is housed at St. Matthew’s Church in Voorheesville. St. Matthew’s, Cotazino said, has the space available to house the food pantry.

 “It’s good to give back to the community,” he said. “We just want to do it. It’s a non-denominational food pantry. It’s for anybody in the area who needs help.”

Cotazino noted that many local volunteers are involved with the food collection. After Thanksgiving, he said, “We move onto the next project. We adopt one or two families for Christmas.”

The association receives the names of one or two families who are food-pantry clients – sometimes the clients are known to members of the association, and sometimes they are not.

“We don’t care. We just want to give a family or two families a happy holiday,” Cotazino said. “We go all out and try to get everything on the list. It’s a blessing for us to be able to do it. Everybody really looks forward to it and contributes.”

Cotazino said that some of the children in the families the group helped years ago have grown up and gone on to college.

“They’ll come right up to me and tell me how much of a difference it made for them,” he said.

One young woman, who wanted to study cosmetology, requested nail polishes and other equipment as a recipient one year, he said.

“We bought her everything on her list,” Cotazino said. She expressed her appreciation to him once, and he shared his wonder about her with The Enterprise.

“She’s got her own salon!” he said. “It really made a difference in her life.”

Cotazino has a sign-up sheet near the turkey drop-off bin, so that donors can detail the food items they brought.

“We always acknowledge people,” he said about the neighbors’ association, which sends donors letters of thanks.

Now that the number of turkeys donated has surpassed the number of homes in the neighborhood, he said, the group may be unable to top the number of donations year to year.

After expressing that sentiment, other volunteers told him, “Then, we’ll start buying two turkeys per house,” Cotazino said.

“It amazes me every year, the outpouring of support for it,” he said. “As long as we’re able to do it, we’re going to do it,” he said.