Second Harvest Food Sorting Saturday, May 12, 3:00 – 6:00p Post Office of Lake Mary, FL (3415 West Lake Mary Blvd)
We are looking forward to supporting the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida with their food sorting project in May. This is not only a great opportunity to serve our community, but also to bond with other club members in the area. We look forward to seeing you in May!
What is the Second Harvest Food Bank? Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida is a private, nonprofit organization that collects, stores and distributes donated food to more than 500 partner agencies in six Central Florida counties: Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia. You can learn more here - http://www.foodbankcentralflorida.org. Saturday, May 14th is the National US Postal Letter Carrier Food collection Event. The Notre Dame Club of Greater Orlando will be assisting Second Harvest with the collection of and sorting of food items delivered to the Lake Mary Post Office.
On Wednesday, the high temperature in South Bend, Ind., was 32 degrees.
In Orlando, it was 70 — and people here were complaining about the cold.
So when University of Notre Dame cheerleaders, football fans and alumni — most of them from out of state — gathered in Central Florida for Thursday’s Champs Sports Bowl featuring the Fighting Irish against Florida State, you might think the Indiana visitors would kick back and savor the sunshine.
Instead, 50 of them went to work at Parramore’s New Image Youth Center — painting, sanding, weeding, assembling new furniture and playing with the kids.
"Whenever we go away to a bowl game, or wherever we have a large group of alumni, parents and friends, we do a service project," said Dolly Duffy, executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. "But that’s only a small part of it."
There are 275 Notre Dame alumni clubs around the world, 220 of them in the United States. Duffy estimates that three-quarters of the clubs do at least one service project a year — or, collectively, about 100,000 hours of community service.
It’s the continuation of a mindset encouraged among students. Just one day earlier, in fact, both Notre Dame and FSU football players turned out at Kissimmee’s Give Kids the World, a nonprofit vacation village for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. The players signed autographs, offered high-fives to the kids and even did a little singing and dancing for entertainment — or comedic relief, depending on your perspective.
For alumnus David Byrnes, president of the Notre Dame Club of Greater Orlando, Wednesday’s service project — coordinated through the Heart of Florida United Way — was the third his group has done in December alone.
Earlier this month, members served dinner at a Ronald McDonald House in Orlando. On Dec. 17, they spent a long day sorting toys for the annual Santa Shop giveaway at the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka. Byrnes, a lawyer, had to work his day job Wednesday, but he helped organize the event and checked out the New Image Youth Center beforehand to make sure it needed the help.
It did.
The center is fueled largely by the passion of its founder, Shanta Barton Stubbs, who started the charity on a shoestring budget seven years ago. Since then, she has made an impact on scores of Parramore’s children through tutoring, mentoring, life skills lessons, after-school programs and summer camps. On Wednesday, as strangers gave up a day of vacation to help them, the kids stepped up, too.
"They not only got a chance to see people giving to them," Duffy said. "They also got a chance to give themselves."
Ryan Shaughnessy can probably recite the Notre Dame Victory March in his sleep.
Growing up, Shaughnessy attended a string of Catholic schools, including St. James School near Lake Eola, Bishop Moore High School in Orlando and finally Notre Dame for college. Largely because of Notre Dame's national popularity, St. James and Bishop Moore had each adapted the Notre Dame fight song as its own.
"I've had to listen to that tune like about a million times," said Shaughnessy, who graduated from Notre Dame in 2003.
Shaughnessy will join hundreds of other Notre Dame alumni and fans from Central Florida and descend upon the Citrus Bowl in Orlando on Thursday night in waves of Notre Dame blue, green and gold. The Fighting Irish are playing Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl.
Anticipation for the game, which pits two of the country's traditional powerhouses and will be televised on ESPN at 5:30 p.m., was so high that the game sold out within a matter of days after the teams were announced. Although having a popular state team like FSU in the game certainly contributed to that, anticipation of the matchup prompted many Notre Dame fans to purchase tickets early.
"I bought my tickets probably about three months ago," David Byrnes said.
Byrnes, who is the president of the Notre Dame Club of Greater Orlando, wasn't the only one. His group sold its allotted 750 tickets within a matter of days. It wasn't difficult. Beyond the schools located in Florida, the Irish have one of the biggest fan bases here of any school in the country.
Byrnes' club consists of about 500 alumni, including several hundred active members. It is one of 15 Notre Dame clubs in the state of Florida. To compare, schools such as Michigan and Ohio State, which have similar winning histories and alumni living all over the country, have far fewer fan clubs in the state (six and 10, respectively).
Many of those Irish fans were thrilled to learn their team would be playing nearby.
"Our alumni base here in Orlando has been looking forward to it for quite some time," Byrnes said. "We'll have a lot of support, and I think we'll have a great game."
Alumni and fans have been ringing Byrnes and the group to hear what activities will be offered during game week.
Those activities include a community-service project hosted by the school's alumni association in conjunction with the Orlando club and the United Way. Volunteers will clean classrooms and paint outdoor facilities at New Image Youth Center on Wednesday.
"They [Notre Dame Alumni Association] have a real passion for making an impact in the communities that they go out to each year for the bowl games," Byrnes added.
Shaughnessy will attend the game with more than 30 family members, including his father, Kevin, who graduated from Notre Dame in 1980.
"When you graduate from Notre Dame, you are part of the family," Rob Thomson II said. "Whether you're 25 or 75."
For Thomson, who is the vice president of the Orlando club, this will be his fifth Notre Dame-Florida State matchup.
"Notre Dame is here and it's a special game, a special day and it doesn't happen very often," Thomson said. In fact, the last time Notre Dame played in the Citrus Bowl was against Navy in 2000.
Despite the length of absence, the spirits of the Notre Dame alumni and fans in the area haven't dampened. In fact, it's just made this meeting a little more special.
"Notre Dame's reach is quite extensive when you start to include not just their football team, but also the Catholic footprint that they have on the entire country," Ryan Shaughnessy said.
