To the Editor:

Yes We CAN! Food Drives is partnering with the YWCA Princeton at its Saturday, September 9, food drive at McCaffrey’s in honor of Susie B. Waxwood Day. Mrs. Waxwood, who died in 2006 at the age of 103, was the first African American Executive Director of the integrated YWCA/YMCA Princeton, from 1958 to 1968.

Each year, the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, of which Mrs. Waxwood was an active member for 60 years, honors her birthday by continuing the tradition she began at the time of her September birthday, the collecting of the amount of canned goods from her congregation that represented her age. She would then donate it to The Crisis Ministry in Princeton as a way of alleviating hunger. Before she died, she commissioned historian and well-known community activist Shirley Satterfield to continue the legacy of the annual memorial food drive.

Partnering with Yes We CAN!, a volunteer group that regularly collects food on behalf of Arm in Arm, formerly known as The Crisis Ministry, made perfect sense to the YWCA Princeton, which this year is organizing the Susie B. Waxwood Day. Since 2008, Yes We CAN! Food Drives has collected over 150 tons of food to help alleviate hunger in Mercer County.

Volunteers from the YWCA and Yes We CAN! will be on hand September 9 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Princeton McCaffrey’s to ask shoppers to donate some extra food in honor of Susie Waxwood, a very special woman. Please participate in our joint effort.

Fran Engler

Yes We CAN! Food Drives, Tuscany Drive

TK Oluwafemi

Volunteer Coordinator, 

YWCA Princeton, Paul Robeson Place