First United Bank, with partnership from other entities, concluded its annual water drive last week to provide bottled water and Gatorade to area fire departments.
The partners for the event met at Pruett’s Food and Green Spray Foods.
Melissa Patterson, Spend Life Wisely ambassador for First United Bank, said the bank had been accepting donations of water and Gatorade to be provided to first responders.
“So, our employees re- sponded by raising $500 and our good friends here at Pruett’s Foods are matching that with another $500,” Patterson said. “We are purchasing three pallets which is roughly 6,000 bottles of water and donating that directly to our Bryan County first responders.”
According to Patterson, overall, the Durant team raised enough to provide more than 20,000 bottles of water. First United also partnered with BrucePac.
“They did a donation to our campus location of one pallet and then our Walmart location has had about 10 pallets donated,” Patterson said. “So, we have really gone crazy this year with donations. Green Spray is a great partner to BrucePac, and so they’re just very involved in the community and wanted to be a part of today. That was BrucePac’s signature vendor that they wanted to use and Green Spray’s such a great supporter of the community.”
Patterson said approximately 20 pallets of bottled water were donated.
“So really, the only thing they should have to worry about is storage for all the water,” Patterson said.
Cody Allen, Bryan County emergency manager, said it is always a blessing when the community comes together to donate to the county fire departments.
“These are all volunteers who spend their time to help the community and fighting fires and taking care of everybody, so it’s great to give back to them and provide them the water during this brutal time of year when it’s always 90 to 100 degrees,” Allen said. “They definitely go through water every year, so it’s just something that they don’t have to worry about for us donating to them and us providing water to them. So, that’s something that they can have to keep them safe whenever they’re out helping our community.”
Bob Delveaux, general manager at BrucePac, said, “We’re very proud of our first responders and we’re happy to partner with First United Bank in donating a pallet of water to these first responders of Durant. We’ve done it a couple of years, and we can’t wait to do it again this year and next year and beyond. We’re very proud of them. We respect them. We’ve worked with them for years and we plan to continue that, so this is just a way for us to show our appreciation to them.”
In other charitable activities, Patterson said that July 1 kicked off First United’s school supplies drive.
“In Durant, you can stop by any of our First United Bank locations and donate school supplies and those school supplies are actually going to be taken directly to the schools,” Patterson said. “We’ll be partnering with Durant Public Schools and Silo Public Schools to get supplies into teacher classrooms.”
