Seven years ago on a blustery November day, Mike Chmura, a retired teacher and the owner of East Chop Sleep Shop, delivered a futon to a house in Vineyard Haven. When he arrived with the bed, he saw a woman stapling plastic sheathing over the screens on a porch. She explained that the porch was to be a bedroom in a winter rental with no other sleeping quarters. The woman, a single mother of two, planned to share the futon with her children. “It beats sleeping in a car,” she told him.

“I offered to give her a couple of twin beds and blankets,” recalls Mike. Later that week an article about the Red Stocking Fund of Martha’s Vineyard
appeared in the newspaper. Red Stocking provides food, clothing, and gifts to Vineyard children in need. (Originally the gifts were delivered in hand-knit red stockings.) Mike’s wife, Pat, telephoned Barbara Silvia of Vineyard Haven, treasurer of the Red Stocking Fund. Barbara remembers getting the call. “They asked if we wanted beds. I was blown away by their generosity. I couldn’t believe it.”

Mike spoke with Tom DiGiovanna, regional sales manager for Sealy Posturepedic. The company agreed to donate six beds to the fund each year. Mike and Pat donate another six. The beds come with frames, mattresses, pillows, sheets, and blankets. “Another thing we’re going to do this year, because of the oil situation, is add about twenty-five wool blankets to the mix,” says Mike. “It bothers me to think of children just curled up on the floor. I want to help make sure every child on the Island has a bed.”

Of course, a bed won’t fit in a red stocking. But so what?

It all began in the 1930s. According to research by the Island historians Chris Baer of Vineyard Haven and Linsey Lee of the Oral History Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society, Addie and Harris Crist left Brooklyn, where Harris worked as an editor at The Brooklyn Eagle, and moved to Vineyard Haven. The couple hosted Christmas parties, to which they opened their house to everyone in town. Addie, who also ran the Altar Guild at Grace Church and was active in the USO, had an idea. She wanted to guarantee that every child on the Vineyard would wake up on Christmas morning and have something to wear, something to eat, and something for fun. So she knitted six red stockings, and with the aid of Irene Landers, a school nurse, they stuffed each stocking with goodies and distributed them to families in need.  

Addie Crist couldn’t have imagined the impact she would have on the Vineyard. Seven decades later, the Red Stocking Fund helps over 150 families a year and more than 250 kids. It provides clothing, holiday meals, presents, and, yes, even beds when necessary.  

The recipient families remain unknown to all but the organization’s co-chairs, Kerry Alley of Oak Bluffs and Lorraine Clark of Vineyard Haven. But not everyone chooses to remain anonymous, especially if the recipient believes that telling his or her story might help others.

Such is the case with Fern Thomas-Minor of Oak Bluffs.

Fern, a single mother of three, moved to the Island to heal after separating from the children’s father. She winterized the summer cottage her family had purchased when she was a teenager and enrolled her kids in school. Sitting on the front deck of her purple, green, and yellow house, a woman as bright and colorful as the house she inhabits tells her story.

“We came [to Martha’s Vineyard] feeling rich in all the important ways. We just didn’t have much money,” says Fern. “When I heard about the Red Stocking Fund, it took me awhile to get to a place where I could apply. But I knew they could help me in a way I couldn’t help myself.

“I knew they were generous, but it was truly amazing to feel that people had taken time to do the gift-wrapping and all the organization. I felt there were
people in this world who felt I was worthy and that my children were worthy, even though we didn’t have money. While intellectually I knew that what you have isn’t who you are, it was still hard. The humanity was so overwhelming that it gives me hope for the world.”

She wasn’t expecting much. “I prepared [the children] all year. I told them that we may have a tree and a little something, but not much. I had no idea of the generosity. And so on Christmas morning when they came down the steps, they thought I had performed a miracle. To see their faces. We had
everything. We even had a turkey dinner. It was wonderful,” says Fern. “Merry Christmas, everyone!”