(WSB photos by Ellen Cedergreen)
Two special holiday donation visits to the West Seattle Food Bank today. First, the annual Nucor Steel tradition – the company and its employees donated more than $17,000 cash and more than 2,400 pounds of food, some of which you see being unloaded above. The Administrative Department won the internal competition to see which department could gather the most donated food, we’re told. Here’s the team from Nucor:

From left, Bart Kale, Winky Lai, Trish Sweat, Larry Dalke, and Don Wood. Bart is the safety/environmental manager and told us this year’s donation means more than ever because times are tough for donors, too, and they had to dig a lot to make such a generous gift. (Earlier today, we reported on another major Nucor donation, for Southwest Youth and Family Services.) Here’s part of the WS Food Bank team:

From left, that’s Mike, Fran, John, Eve, and Jack. A few hours earlier, a different type of donations arrived – more than 50 special bags for toddlers, made from items donated by local families who have toddlers or preschoolers themselves and are involved with groups such as co-operative preschools, PEPS, and West Seattle Teeter Tots.

We heard about this from Jennifer Hedge, who came up with the idea last year, and is in the photo above with Food Bank operations assistant Mike Tinker. She explains that the bags are meant to be given along with regular monthly Toddler Food Bags that are part of the Toddler Feeding Program, and that they contain useful items not covered by that program, as well as some “treats”:

The Toddler Feeding Program provides a little something extra for toddler-age kids whose families use six local Food Banks including West Seattle – graham crackers, Cheerios, juice, peanut butter, fruit, veggies. The “toddler bags” were assembled with a checklist including hats, toothbrushes, toothpaste, a small toy, small book, stickers, goldfish crackers, and more. We asked Jennifer if they needed anything more – she said no, but she would love to see other community groups get involved in this – maybe for their own age, seniors making Senior Bags, etc. We asked Food Bank director Fran the same thing; she said they’re OK for this season, but the most important thing to remember is, please donate at other times of the year too. (Here’s how to give money online.)