Sherwood & McCormick Participates in Lawyers Against Hunger
November 18, 2011—(TULSA) In 2009, a number of agencies that feed the hungry had their funding cut for Thanksgiving. The lawyers at Sherwood & McCormick along with a group of other Oklahoma Attorneys decided to step up and help these groups out by raising funds to purchase the needed turkeys.
In 2010, one of our associates, Hugh M. Robert and an attorney in Oklahoma City decided to make the event even bigger. More than 50 firms and attorneys contributed to the effort and over 750 hundred boxes of pre-packaged Thanksgiving meals were purchased and distributed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Over $30,000 was raised from lawyers/members of the Oklahoma Association for Justice which was used to purchase the meals. Those generous financial commitments came from lawyers all over the state allowed the group to provide food for 4200 hungry Oklahomans.
As the need to feed the hungry in Oklahoma grew, our associate Hugh M. Robert and the attorney from Oklahoma City along with a third attorney from Norman formed Lawyers Against Hunger, Inc. a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting hunger. This allowed all three to fundraise for Thanksgiving and keep funds donated in each donor’s community.
November 17 and 18, 2011 Lawyers Against Hunger distributed Turkeys and pantry boxes to over 2000 families. There were 1000 turkeys given out in Oklahoma City, 500 in Norman, and 500 turkeys along with a pantry box in Tulsa.
This year Lawyers Against Hunger raised over $60,000 to purchase Thanksgiving meals for those in need. Lawyers Against Hunger partnered with the Eastern Oklahoma Food Bank and Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma to purchase the food to hand out.
This year Lawyers Against Hunger had a competition between Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Norman to see which group of attorneys could raise the most money. It came down to the wire and Tulsa narrowly beat Oklahoma City with Norman trailing in at third place. “There are no losers in this competition, only winners from each community where we raised funds to help feed the hungry” said Hugh M. Robert, co-founder of Lawyers Against Hunger. “All funds raised by lawyers in the respective competition cities are staying in those cities. We partnered with Iron Gate to help identify those in need and include many deserving groups such as Emergency Infant Services, Veterans groups, Youth Services, and many more,” says Robert.
Robert went on to describe “one of the many reasons why we had such a great response from Lawyers and many other groups is that we all recognized the significant need after seeing Oklahoma ranked as the fifth hungriest state in the country with many of the hungry being children.” Robert also mentioned the attorneys who helped with this project all had a strong desire to give something back to their communities and recalled a statement made by Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, “we are not the sum of our possessions, they are not the measure of our lives, in our hearts we know what matters, we cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, or a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen that leaves his home, his neighborhood and his town better than he found it.”
The turkey will feed 10 or 11 people and the pantry box is designed to supplement a family of 4 for an entire week. This is the third year lawyers have raised money to help provide Thanksgiving meals and the number of families fed has more than doubled each year.
