The gift that keeps on giving is one that can ignite a community to act.
That’s a step Williamson Gas and Harbor of Grace Outreach are trying to take with the giving tree. The giving tree is a tree set up by both the organization and the company through which people can make a donation to give a coat for a child in the community that needs it.
Connie Williamson is the owner of Williamson Gas. The propane company has been serving the needs of Sampson County since 1928. The company was started by Burl Williamson Sr., father of Burl (B.J.) Williamson Jr.
Williamson Gas was originally an oil company, but in the 1950s, the senior Williamson began to bring back propane gathered in a truck from Charlotte to the city of Clinton and began to sell it. When Williamson Sr. passed away in 1964, Williamson Jr. took over, alongside his wife Connie as co-owners.
Angela Walton, the founder of Harbor of Grace and an employee at Williamson Gas, explained the origins of this tradition. “Typically every year we put up a tree here at Williamson Gas. And when it gets to this time of year, we usually do it before Thanksgiving,” Walton said. “Mrs. Connie came up with an idea. She said ‘Why don’t we use an angel tree, but instead its a coat tree.’ So we just put the coat’s tags up there on cutouts, and people can make a sponsorship or whatever they are able to contribute, and those funds will be used to buy a coat or other needs that are in the community for coats, clothes, and hats. There’s a big need for it for children.”
Williamson recalled, “We were looking for some way to decorate the tree and that’s when it came to me: ‘Well we could put up a little something, and people can purchase a coat, and we put the names on little tags when they purchase them.’ So that was kind of nice I think.”
The tree is decorated with tags with a picture of coats surrounding the ribbons on the tree. Those that have donated get their name on the tags along with a placement on the tree.
The tree reflects the effort that Williamson Gas employees want to give to the same community that’s been supporting them for nearly a century. But it also honors Williamson Jr., who passed away in 2019. Williamson Jr. was very active in the community, especially during the holidays. Walton worked with him for a small period of time, but she mentioned just how impactful he was during that time.
“I worked with Mr. Burl just for a limited time,” she said. “At the time I came, Mrs. Williamson was here and over everything at that point. But in his spirit, you could tell he was just a humble soul, he just really loved people and he always wanted to help people.”
Connie Williamson chimed in, “He always wanted to help people. He always said ‘what can we do to help them?’ Or if we went somewhere and there was somebody in the room that nobody was talking to, he would go talk to them. He was like that always and everybody loved it. He loved people and they loved him. His employees loved him, too.”
“That’s a lot of what our mission is about, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, it’s just like how Mr. Burl was, you know to see those less fortunate or those that are forgotten,” Walton said. “But he was just a very gentle soul.”
This was never more evident then when the Clinton Christmas Parade came around.
“He was the parade Santa Claus, and when he was Santa, he asked the police department to come and pick him up at the office. He said ‘If I drive up with my car, the kids are gonna know who I am,’” Connie Williamson said with a laugh, recalling the memory. “I would have never thought of that, and they did it for him. But when he was in the Santa mode, he was in it 100 percent. When our children got older he stopped doing it, he had to quit then.”
Both Williamson and Walton understand the impact the community has when they participate in events like this. In Walton’s case, Harbor of Grace was created over this past summer and has been assisting in donating coats and sleeping bags for those without those resources.
“It shows you that there is a need and the community can see that there’s a need,” Walton said. “We get into the routines of where we’ll donate these coats to coat drives, but we don’t see it coming back to the community. We don’t see that at work a lot of times. But we’re able to go in hands-on and just say ‘hey here’s a coat.’”
Walton recalled that a few weeks ago, a child came in to the store who needed a coat. She was able to pick the color she wanted.
“I’m not sure if Mrs. Connieeven realized this, but we had a gentleman come in and said, ‘I always wanted to help, but I didn’t know how to help,’ and I think he had done a $20 donation and he was an elderly gentleman. A lot of the stories unfold because they do want to help, they just don’t feel like there’s a place to connect, and I hope that’s what we do: connect.”
Williamson added, “Angela was telling me that there’s so many people that don’t qualify for social services. They don’t have coats, they don’t have food, but they don’t qualify for some reason or another. I think this is much what it’s about, is the people that have not received help but still need help, and it’s in the county, I like that too. We’re (Harbor of Grace) not going all over the state with the coats, it’s right here and there’s a lot of need in our area that a lot of people don’t even realize.”
“Some kids just go to school just to get their meals and they struggle, and that can be mentally struggling also, a lot of times it can effect their grades in school,” Walton stated. “But they just see that outreach. People can donate a used coat, those are fine, but there’s something about having that tag on a new coat that creates that feeling for them. Like Mrs. Connie said, I think it still comes down to us working together as a community and getting the word out that we can work together.”
“We can make a difference,” Williamson added.
Going forward for the future, both shared their thoughts on what they would like to see in the community.
“Everyone says ‘why don’t we have a homeless shelter,’” Walton said. “Good question, but at the same time, if I had a goal, it wouldn’t be a homeless shelter, it would be a resource center, where these people who are homeless and struggling could get guidance on how to get out of these situations, and they would be tag teaming with the community where we have these large businesses here that offer jobs and that we have plans to help them get their ID. It’s easy for someone to say ‘get a job.’ Well, you don’t get a job without an ID, don’t get a job without an address. A lot of people can’t fix food if they don’t have the resources available to take a bath and keep clean. That would be my goal. So we can provide resources without so much red tape. Without having to pass ‘this’ to get ‘this.’ Where it would be open to anyone that needed help.”
“We’re very community oriented,” Williamson concluded. “We don’t like to give out of our county because I feel we have a lot of need here.”