Heart Sunday

One of those random memories of the 1950’s and 60’s happened to have crossed my mind this past Sunday. Back in that time period, the last Sunday of the month would be “Heart Sunday.” I think today the American Heart Association still has a campaign in February for donations. In February on top of Heart Sunday there was also March of Dimes and the United Way, everywhere you went someone had their hand out. Heart Sunday was an involved campaign and the actual logistics of it was quite involved with pre-training sessions for the Heart Fund volunteers and a packet of instructions with donation sheet to each volunteer. In Delmar, Mrs. William Gordy was very active. It would start at the being of February with collection containers in the shape of red plastic hearts being put in stores and businesses everywhere in town for donations. On "Heart Sunday", women volunteers would have a street assigned to them and they would go house-to-house knocking on doors asking for donations. This was usually in the afternoon (after church) when they would take to the streets. Other towns and counties would use a different approach to the Heart Fund collections but as I recall Wicomico County always went with “Heart Sunday.”

In looking at a 1960 Bi-State Weekly some of the Delmar, Maryland people assigned on “Heart Sunday” were;
Spruce Street, Mrs. Lawrence Disharoon
S. Second Street, Mrs. Charles Holloway
Pine Street, Mrs. Darrell Stearns, Mrs. Evelyn Williams and Miss Sandra Perry
Chesnut Street, Mrs. J. William Gordy, Mrs. Otis Mitchell, Mrs. Smiley Hastings and Mrs. Eugene Ross
Elizabeth Street, Mrs. Clifford Sturgis, Miss Barbara Hudson, Mrs. Leslie Smith, Mrs. Vogel Moore and Mrs. James Banks
East Street, Mrs. Mary LeCates, Mrs. Walter Fisher, Mrs. Carlton Hastings, Mrs. Claude LeCompte and Mrs. Edward Shedaker
Maryland Avenue, Mrs. Louis Truitt,
West of Railroad, Mrs. Lamont Williams and Mrs. Joseph Triglia
State Street, Mrs. Allison Webster, Mrs. Howard Hastings, Miss Virginia Brittingham and Mrs.Woodrow Moore
Woodlawn, Mrs. Weslena Furr

Today some of the Maryland neighborhoods are so rough even Jehovah Witnesses don’t go into them. Perhaps that is the reason some streets had multiple people assigned to them instead of one – safer in numbers.