Eastern Maine Community College student Tom Estes of Hampden has begun a Food Drive for Manna Ministries of Bangor and soon will be mailing letters to area businesses seeking contributions.

Manna, for those who are unaware of the services it provides, not only helps feed the needy throughout the year but also helps people in other ways, such as purchasing school supplies for youngsters unable to obtain them on their own.

“I’ve been working on this the last couple of months, getting this organized,” Estes said, “and the Food Drive will actually end with a benefit event” to which everyone is invited.

That event is a benefit concert from 7 p.m. to midnight Thursday, Sept. 2, outside Katahdin Hall on the EMCC campus in Bangor.

Estes hopes to make this concert “one of the biggest events in the school’s history,” which is why he has planned it to coincide with students returning to campus.

However, he emphasized, the concert, which will feature “two live bands and multiple, live DJs,” is open to everyone.

He especially hopes that many community members of all ages will attend.

Admission to the concert is $1 per person or one nonperishable food item for each attendee.

Estes is trying not only to help restock Manna’s food shelves, but also be able to give that organization a sizable financial donation to enable it to purchase even more goods and items for those in need.

As hard as it may be to believe that it’s nearly time for students to return to the classroom, here’s a fun way to get back into the school routine, no matter whether you’re attending classes on a college campus or at a local school, or just preparing your children to do so.

If you would like more information about the Food Drive for Manna or the benefit concert, call Estes at 299-0862.

Because registration for this tournament is limited to the first 52 people who sign up, it’s better to read about it now than later.

The East Orrington Congregational Church and the Men’s and Women’s Ministry of the Church are sponsoring a golf tournament beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 4, at Rocky Knoll Country Club in Orrington.

The fee is $35 per person, and includes a Roast Pig Feed with corn on the cob and all the fixings.

To register, call the church office at 825-3404.

To receive more information about this event, call Ron Landry, 991-9564.

This is a difficult time for Patrick Lessard of East Orland, his family, and all who knew and loved his wife, Kristin Ready Lessard, who died Sunday, July 25, after a long struggle with cancer.

She would have been 26 years old this month.

Patrick’s mother, Hampden Town Manager Susan Lessard, wrote me recently to thank “all the people, statewide, who helped with cards, letters and financial contributions during my daughter-in-law’s two-year ordeal with breast cancer.”

Susan Lessard wrote of the disease that while “it is no respecter of age or persons,” that “Kristin’s courage and will to live – her fight for life – has been an inspiration to all who knew her.”

And while the young wife and husband had only seven years together, “they found what many people search for, and never find, in an entire lifetime,” his mother wrote.

“There was the unchanging love and support of her family and close friends; the kindness and generosity of strangers; the extra efforts of a young women named Jane at the Social Security Administration; the caring and concern of her nurses at the Mary Dow Center in Ellsworth and on the sixth floor at Eastern Maine Medical Center” in Bangor.

Kristin Lessard also had the kind support of her employer, Community Health and Counseling Services in Bangor, “where she continued to work despite overwhelming pain until just before her death,” her mother-in-law wrote, and the added “support and steadfastness” of those associated with Mount Desert Island High School “in keeping my son’s job for him.”

Those are just some examples of the many blessings and kindness bestowed on this young couple, she added.

“I guess,” Susan Lessard wrote, “the bottom line is that while this disease is indeed a terrible thing, the world is not terrible, and the people in it are not terrible.”

In closing, she conveys “our thanks and appreciation” to all of you.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.