CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — As Christmas approaches, women at Ajax Turner Senior Center in Clarksville are making sure people who are homeless have something to unwrap this holiday season.
"I see them out on the streets," Mary New said. "They don't have anything and I just wanted to bring a little Christmas to them."
Mary New and two other women came up with the idea to make Christmas care packages.
"We're senior citizens, but we're not in a rocking chairs folks. We're trying to go out and do something!" she said with a smile.
On a cold December day huddled inside the chapel at the senior center, roughly a dozen women they recruited ranging in age from sixty to their late eighties stuffed dozens of boxes and bags with essentials.
"Hats, scarves, gloves, goodies, the stuff we know they would need," New said.
According to Clarksville's Office of Housing and Community Development there were 300 sheltered and unsheltered people in the city last winter.
"They are just like us, just down on their luck," New said.
New is legally blind. She said she knows what it is like to feel forgotten and did not want that to be the case for people who are homeless.
"If anything, [these are] made with a lot of love and they [now] know people of Clarksville love them," she said.
New and a few other women will deliver the wrapped boxes to homeless camps throughout the month of December.
In January, Clarksville officials will update the city's homeless count.
