By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
In the first grade, Connie Tessier moved to Hartland Four Corners with her six siblings. Her father was a carpenter who couldn’t find work during the Great Depression. Tessier’s mother stayed home to care for the kids.
“There were a lot of mouths to feed. I’m sure my mother struggled and struggled and struggled,” said Tessier, 90.
There was no assistance for the working poor back then. Tessier ate potatoes for dinner.
“We just made with what we had,” she said.
Growing up poor, Christmas gifts were scant for Tessier as her parents struggled to get by. One year, Tessier’s mother trimmed an older sibling’s coat for her.
But Tessier can still remember the Christmas she got a doll.
“It was the most wonderful thing for me because I wouldn’t have had a doll,” she said. “That was a luxurious gift.”
Thanks to Tessier, dozens of local families will get that same feeling this Christmas.
About forty years ago, Tessier, who still lives in Hartland Four Corners, helped launch the Hartland Christmas Project which gives presents, coats and baskets to about 300 struggling Hartland residents at Christmas every year. The Christmas Project also helps people pay utility and medical bills and buy heating fuel.
Tessier started it when factory stores in Windsor closed and many families lost work. It started at Christmas. It grew to help families the entire year as more and more people needed help.
To qualify now, the recipients have to be Hartland residents. Each person in the family fills out a form, writing their needs (such as a winter coat) and wants (like a crock pot). A volunteer goes shopping for those items and wraps the gifts.
Each family also gets a food box to make a Christmas dinner. They can take free toys and clothes.
“I don’t think people really understand the amount of poverty in the town of Hartland,” said Jeannie Frazer, who has organized the project since taking it over from Tessier 10 years ago.
Tessier also helped found the Hartland Food Shelf eight years ago and she started a Thanksgiving dinner 10 years ago with Jill Lloyd for those who eat alone or who don’t have the money to eat a traditional meal. One hundred fifty people filled the church last week.
“The whole concept of it is really important to her,” Lloyd said. “She’s always concerned about the welfare of people.”
Tessier doesn’t let age slow her down. Every year Tessier cuts the Thanksgiving pies (20 of them this year) and puts them on serving plates.
She’s one of a group of about 20 volunteers who sit and peel 80 pounds of potatoes and 80 pounds of squash the night before the Thanksgiving meal. Tessier, an active member of the Hartland’s First Unitarian Universalist Society and a dedicated community member who serves on all sorts of committees, is humble about the giving she does.
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it,” Tessier said.
Tessier’s health has declined and she doesn’t have the stamina she once had. She can’t drive anymore and she can’t stand up for long without a chair close by. But she does what she can to make sure everybody has a warm meal and company for the holidays. Because she knows what it’s like to not have the extras that make holidays special.
“She’d rather give to others than receive herself,” said Tessier’s friend Carol Perry. “She never asks for anything. She doesn’t like to call on people to take her places.
“It’s just her way. She just has to help people.”
Perry worked with Tessier to start the food shelf. It began with a donation box for canned goods outside the church. Tessier and Perry delivered the food to families they knew were in need.
“She saw people that were really hurting,” Perry said.
The food shelf now serves 51 families. It’s become a gathering place with people sitting around a table and enjoying coffee and refreshments for the entire two hours the food shelf is open.
Tessier talks to them — about how they’re doing and how they’re feeling about their life.
“She worries about other people who don’t have much money,” said church member Clyde Jenne. “She doesn’t want anybody to suffer.”
She also doesn’t want anybody to go hungry.
Tessier gets something out of it, too.
“It’s in my blood or something,” she said. “I just come home feeling good about myself.”
This article first appeared in the December 3, 2015 edition of the Vermont Standard.