Trading school supplies for ice cream

On Sunday afternoon, the Crawfordsville Fire Station was the place to be to get some cool relief from the late summer heat wave.

The Crawfordsville Community Club hosted its annual ice cream social, a fundraiser for WACO Elementary School.

“We do an ice cream social every fall, and we request the people bring school supplies for the ice cream,” Community Club President Roy Felts said. “We take all the supplies down to WACO Elementary and donate them. This is our third year, I believe.”

People dropped by the fire station with either a donation of supplies or cash in exchange for a locally-made ice cream sandwich.

“The ice cream sandwiches were donated by Mike Miller,” Felts said. “They come from DeLovely’s Mini Donuts right here.”

He said that the response from the community has been positive every year.

“We’ve always had a lot of school supplies,” he said. “We usually go out and buy $300-$400 worth of stuff with cash that’s been donated.

“We usually try to save about $100 back and give it to the music boosters as well.”

Felts, who serves as the city’s fire chief, explained that the ice cream social is one of four fundraising events the Community Club puts on each year.

In addition to the ice cream social, they put on a spaghetti supper in the spring, an Easter egg hunt and Crawfordsville Fun Days.

“Everything we do is to give back to the community,” Felts said. “Everything is around funding some kind of community event. We have our four main ones, but if we ever need to do a fundraiser for somebody in the community, that will come through the Community Club as well.

“It’s all about the community 100 percent.”