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After you claim your spot for tomorrow’s Downtown Springfield Christmas Parade, you might want to stock up on cookies and hot beverages and help out an organization that helps kids. KSMU’s Michele Skalicky explains…
As I enter the fellowship hall and adjacent kitchen at University Heights Baptist Church, the enticing aroma of baking cookies fills the air. Reading is Fundamental board members are busy preparing the treats to sell during the Springfield Christmas Parade.
As I enter the kitchen, I’m greeted by Peggy Stepp, President of RIF, who is busy icing cookies. She shows me tables in the fellowship hall that are already filled with cookies in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors…
"We have large cookies so that the children can come inand get a hot cup of cocoa and a big cookie and be on a sugar high while watching the Christmas parade. And then we've got a variety of cookies that parents and adults are interested in--looks like there's old-fashioned peanut butter and then sour cream sugar cookies. We're getting ready to do the black and whites, and there's some brownies and, of course, the perennial chocolate chip cookie. You can't do anything without a chocolate chip cookie."
The sale of the cookies during the parade tomorrow helps raise funds for RIF, which provides free books three times a year for every 1st and 2nd grader in Springfield Public Schools. According to Stepp, in these economic times, some families may not have extra money to buy books…
"The concept is a very simple one. You put a book in a child's hand that he gets to choose, it's bright and colorful, and you're gonna encourage him to read."
The local RIF program, which was started in Springfield by Junior League in 1979, provides nearly 15,000 books each year to Springfield Public School students.Retired teacher Sophia Griesbaum was putting chocolate chip cookie dough onto cookie sheets. She remembers one student at Bingham who was always excited to get her RIF books…
"She'd back other first graders into the corner and read to them, and they would be kind of frustrated. They wouldn't know what to do."
Today RIF is a free-standing board, and board members were up to their elbows in flour and cookie dough Thursday…
"As you can tell this is a board that isn't like, 'oh, I'll go on this board' or 'I work on this board.' It's like, hey, you get in, you roll your sleeves up, and you getin andwork."
Even though the annual cookie sale makes up less than a tenth of Springfield RIF’s income, Stepp says they have so much fun, they just keep doing it.Kim Martin is on the board, and she’s been dubbed “the Sugar Queen” since she was in charge of decorating with colored sugar…
"Why do you get involved in the cookie baking each year?"
"Well, it's fun. It's a good fundraiser for us, and it helps us buy books."
When a cookie broke, that meant it was sample time.RIF has been holding its cookie sale during the Springfield Christmas Parade for about seven years.Tomorrow’s sale will be held in two locations: in the Gillioz on Park Central East and at Penmac on South St. It will start around noon and go until the parade ends.
