Kennebunk Cares Closet leaves behind a legacy of giving: 'It feels good'

Yahoo

21-04-2025

KENNEBUNK, Maine — Kennebunk Cares Closet officially closed its doors on Saturday, April 12. While many are saddened by its departure, there's comfort in knowing the beloved clothing program thrived five years longer than expected, thanks to the dedication of its lead volunteers, Jack and Mary Bates.
The Bateses took over the operation, located in the basement of a local church, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. At that time, the program was run by local educators who were grappling with their own set of pandemic-related challenges within their profession.
'They were terrific,' Jack Bates said. 'But when COVID hit ... they just didn't have the time to keep it up.'
Jack and Mary, who had been volunteering for the program for a few years, did not want to see Kennebunk Cares Closet's door close, so they stepped in and continued providing those in need with clothes that had been donated.
Fast forward to 2025. According to Jack Bates, the church needs the basement space that it had been providing Kennebunk Cares Closet to host its classes and other programs.
Before anyone thinks that is an unfortunate step for a church to take with a program known for helping the greater community, Bates is quick to make an important point: the demand for the service that Kennebunk Cares Closet provided has dropped significantly in recent years.
'If we were going gangbusters, I'm sure we could have talked them out of it,' Bates said, regarding the church's hope for reclaiming its classroom space.
Congdon's Doughnuts legacy lives on: Here's what new owners have planned
There are a couple of reasons for that downturn in demand, according to Bates.
One, the program never returned to its pre-pandemic strength, given the impacts of that global health crisis on volunteerism and other factors. Getting donations and filling orders became difficult, especially with social workers staying home and schools shutting down for remote learning. The avenues through which needs were conveyed had become limited.
'COVID killed us,' Bates said.
Case in point. The program hit its peak of service between September and December of 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, when it filled 1,170 orders.
'After that, it was on the way down,' Bates said. 'This year, in four months, we've only had 50 families.'
Another reason for the drop in demand in recent years was that other organizations and programs have stepped up in neighboring communities to help fill the continued need people have for donated shoes, coats, and other clothes.
Maine Needs, a nonprofit based in Portland, is one of them – and the one to which Bates encourages people to contact if they wish to donate clothes or need some to wear. The organization has distributed more than one million donated items of clothing in its time and boasts more than 2,500 volunteers.
'Maine Needs is the biggy,' Bates said. 'They have everything.'
Bates said their remaining inventory of clothes and shoes soon will find their way onto people's backs and feet.
'We've made sure that where it all goes will be a nonprofit – that nothing will be sold, or anything like that,' Bates said.
More: York Beach's Nevada named one of the 'Best New Hotels in the World' by Esquire
In its last few months, Kennebunk Cares Closet had three volunteers: Jack and Mary Bates, and a woman named Sheryl. The program, however, has a long list of volunteers who worked hard and made a difference over the years, according to Bates.
While Jack Bates is sad to see Kennebunk Cares Closet's door close, he said it feels wonderful to have helped so many people over the years – thousands and thousands of families, as he put it.
'It feels good,' he said. 'Very gratifying.'
He and Mary are both retired – he, as a salesman for Sears & Roebuck, she as a coder at the former Goodall Hospital in Sanford – and Kennebunk Cares Closet proved a good match for them in their post-work life.
'We had fun doing it,' Bates said. 'It was a lot of work – a lot more work than you think.'
Say you got 20 bags of donations, for example. Bates said he and Mary and others would go through them and often determine that only five of them might have clothing fit for providing to others – meaning, no holes, no stains, no missing buttons, no broken zippers, you name it.
'We made sure everything was wearable – nothing that you'd be ashamed to wear,' he said.
Kennebunk Cares Closet did not just help people in town. The program helped everyone everywhere. When asked how far-ranging the program's reach extended, Bates could not answer precisely, but he recalled once helping a family of seven from as far away as Oxford.
'We don't know,' he said. 'From wherever a request came in, we filled them. If you filled out a request in an email, we filled it. We didn't ask any questions. There were no qualifications. If you wanted it, you got it.'
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kennebunk Cares Closet closes its doors after helping thousands