By: Robin Ford Wallace

Staff Reporter

As Chris Hagler, pastor of Rising Fawn Church of God, leads worship services of a Sunday morning, he tells parishioners to love their neighbors, to honor the Lord, and that notebooks are on sale three for a dollar at Fred’s. He dismisses them with a prayer, a blessing and the reminder: “We don’t need any more pencils.”

Or so says his wife, Amy, who, along with volunteer Nancy Belk, met recently with the Sentinel to discuss the church’s ongoing initiative, Project Backpack. On Aug. 7, the Rising Fawn congregation will for the second year give away free school supplies to area youngsters, and six licensed beauticians will shear as many youthful heads as show up.

“We wore them out last year,” said Ms. Hagler.  “They cut over a hundred head of hair.”

She’s expecting rather more locks to hit the floor of the fellowship hall this time around as news of the giveaway gets out and attendance swells. “We’re shooting to supply school supplies for 500 children this year,” said Ms. Hagler.  “Last year we supplied around 350, so we’re just assuming it’s going to grow.”

The supplies, which include paper, crayons and glue sticks as well as the backpacks to carry them in, are donated not by retailers but by the Church of God’s 40 to 50 members, and that’s why Chris Hagler begins each church service by announcing where the best sales are this week.

The congregation has been buying school supplies since they went on sale after classes began last year, said Ms. Hagler.“We go and we clear out stores,” she said. “We found some items on sale this past week at Staples for a penny.”

“There’s a Walgreen’s I pass on the way to work, so whatever they’ve got on sale, I stop and purchase that,” said Nancy Belk. “This afternoon I’ll hit Wal-Mart, and there’s no telling what I’ll find there.”

The two displayed a church nursery where a leaning tower of notebooks loomed over neatly labeled piles of erasers and magic markers, to the point it was difficult to imagine where actual children could be squeezed in.  But this was nothing, they said. “This is just the beginning. It will probably get about three or four times bigger than this,” said Ms. Hagler.

She credited the idea for Project Backpack to her husband, Chris, who takes notions like this from time to time. Last Christmas, for example, he got it into this head to give local nursing home residents each a blanket. “The funny thing was, their power went out at the nursing home in the winter,” said Ms. Hagler.  “They called and it was like, thank you so much, you don’t know how much they needed those blankets.  That’s just a God thing.”

But the provenance of Project Backpack is a little easier to track down. In addition to his ministry at Rising Fawn Church of God, Hagler is also a full-time schoolteacher in Fort Payne. “He sees kids there that don’t have a pencil to their name,” said his wife. In such cases, she said, it’s up to the teacher to come up with supplies, which can get to be a burden.

Besides, said Ms. Belk, kids have pride, too. They want the same gear other kids have, and they love getting a new backpack stuffed with goodies. “They can’t wait to get it open and see what’s in it,” she said.

When he announced the backpack project last year, said his wife, Hagler was brand new at the church – he celebrated his first anniversary there just this April. “I think the church was probably scared,” she said. 

“It got bigger and bigger, and it was on TV.”

“But last year worked so well, they’re looking forward to it this year,” said Ms. Belk.

They said the entire congregation is now fully on board after turnout for the 2009 giveaway made overwhelmingly clear just how a great a need there was for it. Families showed up not just from Rising Fawn but from as far away as Rhea County, Tenn. No one was turned away, and supplies lasted exactly until the last kid walked in at 2 p.m. – another of Ms. Hagler’s “God things.”

This year, instead of stuffing each backpack to order as kids walk in, as they did last year, church volunteers will prepack them from a list of age-appropriate supplies furnished by the schools.

In addition to writing and art supplies, backpacks will contain such items as Kleenex and hand sanitizer as well as a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss donated by Fort Payne-area dentists.

And for those who do have to wait, a puppet show will be performed several times throughout the morning, and water and iced treats will be dispersed.

Ms. Hagler and Ms. Belk hope these improvements will make things move a bit more smoothly this year, but otherwise hope only that the event will be as successful as it was in 2009. “The kids were so thrilled last year,” said Ms. Hagler. “I remember seeing one little girl. She got a pink backpack and it was just like Christmas for her.”