‘Coats for Kids’ an exemplar of true charity

In our town, no one need go without a coat, thanks to ‘Coats for Kids’ (L-R) Rob Lunney, Russell Petrozzi, Joseph Petrozzi and Margot Fritton

Once in a while you find a fact that maybe others know but is so important that it deserves to be told again.

I thought I was going to Capitol Cleaners to hear about some nice little charity. Giving three or four coats away. But what I did not know is that “Coats for Kids,” started here in Niagara Falls – by the man who today is still operating it, Joseph Petrozzi, has become a multi-state initiative, with thousands of participants.

A businessman – not a professional charity monger– Joe started this, and never once took a salary or set it up for anyone to profit. He devised one of those rarest of things in this government-does-everything era: a charity where all the charity goes to the recipients.

It started back in 1966. The longtime owner of Capitol Cleaners, on Main Street, is located near the Harry F. Abate School.

“We’d be in the store early in the morning,” Joe recalled, “And I would see children coming up the street. Many times they'd be wearing only a sweater or a jacket with no zipper, very skimpy, and so, I had some of my son’s old jackets here and I would give them to the kids.”

Soon this was not enough.

“So I started asking my brothers, brothers-in-law and neighbors, if they had extra coats they had outgrown. Everybody was happy to do that, so I put a box in front of the store. And I put a note on it, ‘Coats for the Kids.’”

Later it expanded as people caught the spirit. Joe took the growing supply of jackets to schools.

“We went to the schools and they would have a coat closet. As it got bigger, we started having them come into the store.”
Then bigger. They started giving coats to a priest who ran a store on Ontario Street.

“We would bring him coats on a certain day and we would get it into the newspaper and people would go there to pick up the coats,” recalls Petrozzi.

What happened as a spontaneous gesture of kindness grew into a multi state campaign throughout the Eastern United States. There are “Coats for Kids” from New York to Florida.

The real, multi-state expansion occurred when Joe was president of the local chapter of the National Dry Cleaners Association. Today, the association helps oversee and support individual communities where local dry cleaners have followed Joe’s model.

In Western New York, Coats for Kids has two distribution days, (October 27) and one upcoming (November 24th, from 10 to 2.)

People who needs coats, gloves, hats or sweaters can come to the Portage Road side of Capitol Cleaners and get them free.
And people who receive the charity do not have to debase themselves or prove they need a coat. People go into the warehouse and pick their own coats. Through this store alone they give away 5,000 coats a year. Throughout Western New York, 20,000 coats are given away through Coats for Kids.

In our town, there is no one who needs a coat, gloves or hat who does not get one. Funny too, this costs taxpayers nothing. Can you imagine if this were a government program, how much it would cost to give away 5000 coats? In fact, it costs Joe and his son Russ, who works with him, money to do this. They dry clean every coat.

“People are good,” Russ said. “They don’t bring us trash. We have designer jackets sometimes. Sabres jackets, Buffalo Bills. On any given day we get coats. Today we got a couple big bags full. A lot of our customers don’t have kids and they go out and buy 20, 30 new coats and bring them, which is really wonderful. Unless they are new, we clean every one.”

What kind of people get the coats?

“All kinds. Young girls carrying a baby in a stroller; they may have other children with them. Grandmothers coming with their grandchildren. We see older men and women in need too,” said Joe. “We help adults, too.”

Russ added, “We get people from Tonawanda, Buffalo, because they will hear about it. You see people coming with kids, it’s heartbreaking.”

Do you see roustabouts and scammers coming for a freebie?

Russ said, with a smile, referring to his dad, “He takes the credit. I do the work. You have no idea how much work it is collecting the coats all year long, getting them cleaned, getting the room clean and ready, but, anyway about five or six years ago, smartphones had just come out. And here is somebody in line with a $500 smartphone in their hand and I was surprised. I said, ‘why do we do this?’ And my dad said, ‘Do you think for one minute the guy, if he didn’t have a smartphone in his hand, he was gonna buy a coat for the kid? You gotta do what you gotta do. Just shut up and keep doing it.’”

Joe added quietly, “People get angry when they see somebody taking advantage and say, ‘the hell with this I’m never gonna do it again.’ And what do you do if you stop? You hurt everybody else that actually needs it.”

Going through the long labyrinth called the warehouse that sits behind the storefront people know as Capitol Cleaners, we saw coats in abundance, being readied for November 24.

Some were on hangers and racks, already dry cleaned. Some were in bags waiting to be cleaned.

Standing by these thousands of coats was Margot Fritton. She sorts, tags, gets them cleaned then goes through them to make sure zippers are good and that they look good. She has worked on the project for six years and worked at Capitol Cleaners for 12.

Rob Lunney was there, too, as he has been for a decade.

“About 5 or 6 years ago, Russell set up clothes closets in the schools and the guidance counselors at the schools, if they see a student who comes in on a cold day and has a wet jacket or no jacket, they tell them to go to the closet and get a coat,” Rob said.

Margot added, “And the Red Cross, if someone has a fire, they have our number. People have fires and lose their coats, they lost everything, so we bring them clothes, too.”

In a town more often described as broken and in need of charity itself, more government aid, and dependency, quietly, without fanfare, a man and his family-owned business make it a point of honor that, in their town, no child or for that matter any poor man or woman, will go any day in the cold without a coat, or gloves or a decent hat. This kind of action, by people like Joe, Russ, Rob and Margot, is what might be described as the backbone of America. And proves in some way Niagara Falls, New York, is more than alive; it is well.