The Swampscott Rotary Club donated 100 fruit baskets to “our valued friends” during the holiday season.
For more than 50 years, the Swampscott Rotary Club has delivered holiday fruit baskets to senior centers in Swampscott and Nahant, as well as to town departments, senior citizens, individuals who have lost loved ones, and others who may be ill or in need of extra support. In recent years, the group averaged about 80 baskets.
“We give some to Nahant, Swampscott, and a few to Marblehead and Salem if somebody’s there,” Swampscott Rotary Treasurer Buck Weaver said.
Weaver noted that the Rotary Club always provides baskets to the families of Marine Capt. Jennifer Harris and Army Specialist Jared Raymond.
Harris graduated from Swampscott High School in 1996 and from the United States Naval Academy in 2000. Upon graduation, she was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, completed training at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, and earned her Wings of Gold on Sept. 13, 2002. After completing additional training at Camp Pendleton in California, Harris was deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, where she was assigned to the Purple Foxes of HMM-364.
Weaver said that service was at the core of Harris’ life. She participated in Toys for Local Children at Swampscott High School and, while a midshipman at the Naval Academy, organized a similar program for children in the Annapolis area.
Harris served three tours of duty in Iraq and was killed in action on Feb. 7, 2007.
Raymond was killed in action while serving in Iraq in September 2006. He played baseball in the Swampscott Little League and basketball in the St. John the Evangelist Church CYO League, and he also served as an altar boy at the church. After graduating from Swampscott High School in 2004, he joined the Army less than a month later. Raymond was a member of the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Hood, Texas.
A memorial for Raymond stands at the corner of Essex Street and Swampscott Road.
“The point is that we give it to people who we think it would be nice for them to know that we’re thinking about them,” Weaver said.
