Table of Contents
Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.
Long tables stretch across the main hall at VFW Post 2005, where dozens of volunteers lean over rolls of festive wrapping paper, scissors gliding through glossy sheets adorned with snowflakes and holly. Gold ribbon curls between practiced fingers. Stacks of cookie boxes tower nearby, waiting their turn. Along the walls, cardboard cartons bear handwritten labels: Route 12, Route 23, Route 37.
This is the machinery of the Edith Dodge Memorial Fund in motion, an annual tradition now in its 52nd year that brings a small gift and a friendly knock on the door to over 900 Marblehead residents 80 and older each December. The fund also delivers soft fleece blankets and stuffed animals to elders in local nursing homes and extended care facilities, ensuring that former Marbleheaders living beyond town borders are not forgotten during the holidays.
For the volunteers gathered at the VFW this morning, the work is both logistical puzzle and labor of love. Peg Houghton, who recently became president of the fund’s board, says the effort speaks to something essential about Marblehead’s character.
“I think it probably speaks to not forgetting our elderly, you know, people that are over 80 that might be housebound and don’t have family nearby, that Christmas can be lonely, or holidays can be lonely, and so just a simple act of kindness, bringing cookies to them and saying hello, can mean a lot to someone like that,” Houghton said.
The Edith Dodge Memorial Fund was founded five decades ago by Edith Dodge, Marblehead’s first Council on Aging director, to ensure no elder in town would be forgotten during the holidays. Today it operates as a nonprofit, sustained entirely by donations and volunteer hours. Houghton oversees a working board of women who begin planning each September, compiling lists of every resident turning 80 that year alongside those already on the rolls. Anyone born in 1945 or earlier qualifies. All residents in senior housing receive gifts as well.
The fund raises roughly $15,000 annually to purchase cookies, clementines for diabetics and those with dietary restrictions, wrapping paper, cards, blankets and plush animals. Donation boxes sit at Marblehead Bank and National Grand Bank. Contributions may also be mailed to P.O. Box 1402, Marblehead, Massachusetts, 01945.
By early December, the logistics crescendo. This year volunteers are wrapping 1,200 boxes of cookies, each gift containing one box tied with ribbon. The work happens in waves at the VFW, which donates the space. Members of the Cottage Gardeners of Marblehead and Swampscott arrive in shifts, joined by Rotary Club volunteers and individuals who respond to notices on social media or in local newspapers. Former president Joan Cutler said they have earned a nickname among fund organizers: the Wrap-and-Chats.
“As fast as they wrap, they chat,” she said.
Linda Sullivan, a Rotary member who began volunteering four years ago after retiring, says the experience offered exactly what she was seeking.
“When I retired, I just wanted to give back to the community, and it’s been so good to me, this whole area, that I wanted to give back,” Sullivan said. “And it just feels good. Lovely group of women, and they work harder than anyone I know.”
If stories like this matter to you — the quiet work of neighbors making sure no one is forgotten — please consider becoming a member of The Marblehead Independent. It costs about $80,000 a year to run our newsroom, and we’re working to reach 100 monthly or annual contributors by the end of the year so we can keep this kind of on-the-ground, year-round local reporting free for everyone in town. 🟦 Click here to become an Independent member
Once wrapped, the gifts are sorted into roughly 40 routes, each containing 20 to 25 addresses clustered geographically across town. Volunteer delivery teams of two begin fanning out the following week, working through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to complete the rounds. Houghton emphasizes that this is not a drop-and-run operation. Volunteers call ahead when possible to avoid alarming residents. They wait at doors, chat if invited in, sometimes return on weekends if no one answers.
“Volunteers should expect the recipients will want to chat, or perhaps invite them in for a cup of tea,” Houghton said. “After a point, volunteers can cite the need to complete their routes to make a graceful exit, but a certain amount of indulgence is expected.”
In recent years, organizers have also encouraged families — not just formal teams — to take on routes together, making the deliveries a multigenerational tradition that often includes Girl Scout troops, children’s religious education classes classes and Cub Scout packs. Cutler said that shift has been as meaningful for recipients as it is for the children who knock on the doors. “Most recipients love seeing the children,” she said.
Beverly Bucknam has participated for roughly 30 years through the Cottage Gardeners of Marblehead and Swampscott and now receives gifts herself as an 80-plus resident.
“I think it says a lot,” Bucknam said of what the tradition reveals about Marblehead. “I think what’s a Christmas without the Edith Dodge Fund? What are the people that receive them, you know, what do they think? I think it brings people together.”
Sullivan echoed that sentiment, describing the moment of delivery.
“It just warms my heart that everybody does this, the wrappers, the deliverers,” Sullivan said. “It means so much to everyone, and then to see the smiles on the faces when you deliver them.”
The fund maintains meticulous records year-round, updating delivery lists, noting residents who travel south for winter or prefer to decline gifts, tracking those with dietary needs for clementines instead of cookies. Roughly 10 percent of purchased gifts go unclaimed and are donated to the Marblehead Food Pantry. Notes of gratitude arrive at the fund’s post office box throughout the season, sustaining the volunteers through another year of planning.
Back at the VFW, paper rustles and ribbon spools unwind. Cartons fill with wrapped packages destined for doorsteps across town. The tradition persists because dozens of people show up, year after year, to ensure that aging neighbors know they are remembered.
