“I promise to do my best/To love and serve God, to do my duty to the Queen;/To keep the law of the Wolf Cub pack,/And to do a good turn for somebody every day.”
That’s the motto that members of the Cub Scouts group in Elmira try to live by. This week, member Justin Read has gone and performed that good turn, with no prompting from anyone.
Justin came to the Scouts’ meeting a few weeks back with a fundraising plea to help out a friend, his neighbour on Duke Street whose family home was lost in the recent fire. No one was injured in the blaze that started in the middle of the night, but the family’s personal belongings were lost, a tragedy that Read said he can’t even imagine.
With that in mind, he decided to raise a bit of money, which he knows cannot cover all the items lost in the fire, but at least it’s a good start.
“We just thought it would be a good idea to give them something when they really need it.”
A fluorescent light fixture was believed to be the cause of the fire that started in the kitchen during the early hours of a Saturday morning in November. The residents, a couple who had just purchased the house in July, were forced to flee their home before it was destroyed. Damage is estimated at $300,000.
Members of the 1st Elmira Scouts have started collecting their spare change and they plan to present it to the affected family when they finish their fundraising efforts in a few weeks.
“I am friends with the girl that lived there, and I wanted to do something nice for her,” Read explained.
