This December marks the 25th holiday season since Cranston High School West began its Adopt-a-Family Holiday Giving Tree, which helps provide holiday gifts for West students and their families in need.

The tradition was started in 1996 by Diane Williams, one of the school’s secretaries, and Deana Barlow, a West special education teacher, and both seemed honestly surprised the tradition has not only survived, but thrived, over the past twenty-five years.

The Cranston West Giving Tree provides the school community with an opportunity to purchase toys and other necessities for Cranston West families in need as nominated by their faculty and staff. Nominations are collected confidentially from around the school and shared with Williams and Barlow, who then reach out to parents and guardians to ask whether they would like their family to participate.

If a family decides to participate in the program, Barlow and Williams collect holiday gift requests from all the families’ children and young adults, and turn the confidential requests over to the community, who can either sponsor by donating cash or gift cards, or obtain requested items and return them to the school.

Nominated families then receive, through their parents or guardians, the gifts obtained for them by the West community.

Each snowflake on the tree, which sits in West’s lobby, includes the gender and age of a nominated individual, along with an item requested by that individual. Faculty, staff, alumni parents, and others in the Cranston West community then remove snowflakes from the tree and return both the snowflakes and requested items back to the school.

“We also try to do a family gift of gift cards to the supermarket, because everybody deserves a nice, hot meal on a special day,” Barlow said. She noted they have also begun including restaurant gift cards to families, hoping to give them either an experience they have either never had or are rarely able to enjoy.

They said their beginnings were quite humble, asking faculty and staff to donate $3 each for a dress-down day so they could purchase presents for families in need.

Twenty-five years later, they were proud to share they have not only grown their foundation of support to include faculty and staff, alumni families, individuals in the community, but have also begun to secure corporate sponsorships.

“We’re fortunate,” Barlow said, “The people that we work with, the families who donate are very generous.” Though they said they do not wish to rely on the sponsorships, they are both grateful to have those resources every year to help make recipients’ holidays more special.

The pair, who often finish one another’s sentences, appear to have truly embodied the Giving Tree spirit.

“We get a lot of tears when parents come to pick up the stuff, and we don’t ask for anything. We just tell them it’s something we want to do. There are no expectations. Just have a great day that day when the gifts get opened, and don’t tell the kids it’s from us,” Barlow said.

Williams noted the generosity they see each year when it comes to obtaining gifts for the tree.

“Because it’s been 25 years,” she said, “Donors just know. They just come in and take off the tree. It’s really nice. Or some people just bring gifts, and they haven’t taken anything off the tree. They just donate, which means the families will get more because they still have the snowflake to do.”

Both staff members joke that after 25 years neither has any thoughts of quitting.

The pair explained how difficult it is to hear some of the stories they learn about nominated families. They’ve helped families who have been through house fires, homelessness, unemployment, and terminal illness. Both Barlow and Williams stated they have no reason to ever stop.

“It’s a labor of love,” they said in unison.

One point they both were truly grateful for, they said, was the level of involvement of the school, and that the project has taken on a life of its own. For example, the Entrepreneurship students, part of the Career and Technical Program’s DECA students, assemble and decorate the tree, and that donors seem ready, almost intuitively, each year to begin shopping for families.

Barlow and Williams, despite the significant ways they’ve helped the school community over the years, insist on remaining both humble and behind the scene. The pair do not want credit or attention for the joy they’ve very quietly brought to West families, despite being the two-woman crew that has collected and accounted for the items, gathered and wrapped the gifts, and distributed all donations to families every year since the program began.

When asked what started the whole tradition in the first place, they simply responded, “Just compassion.”

“We try to put ourselves in their shoes,” Barlow said, “Because you never know.”