Dennison, Ohio - The Dennison Fire Department is thanking the community for helping them put food on the tables of 100 Twin Cities families this holiday season.

Chief Dave McConnell says their month-long Share-A-Christmas food drive brought in enough donations this year to provide each of those families with a large box stuffed to the brim with groceries. 

"The boxes are usually pretty big, and this year they were they were stuff right to the top to where you could just barely get them closed," he says.

McConnell says they collected between 500 and 1,000 canned food items along with nearly $5,000 in monetary donations that they used to provide each family with a full Christmas dinner.

"They get a gift certificate for a ham or turkey, they get a gallon of milk and all the fixings and stuffing and canned goods and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, the whole nine yards. They also get 10 pounds of potatoes, apples, oranges, eggs, butter, bread, dinner rolls. It’s enough stuff in those boxes to supply a full family Christmas dinner and then also mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, et cetera, non-perishable items that go with those boxes," he says.

McConnell says this wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of the community and the hard work of the firefighters and their families.

"We really want to thank them for their donations to this project. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years now, that’s a rough estimate, but we really appreciate everybody’s donations," he says. "Second of all, I’d like to thank Share-A-Christmas for getting us those families and being able to supply those hundred families with Christmas dinners and also my staff and their families for pitching in, helping out.”

McConnell says the families came to the station to pick up their boxes last Saturday.

STACEY CARMANY, TUSCO TV