ST. MARGARET MARY DEANERY - St. Xavier High School met its 100,000-pound goal while continuing an 80-year tradition of helping the needy of Cincinnati at Christmas. The school's annual canned food drive, dating back to 1928, hit the six-figure mark in pounds of food collected Dec. 13. Students, parents, faculty, staff and alumni helped deliver the food to hundreds of families in impoverished areas of Cincinnati on the next day.

The 2007 drive brought in 109,132 pounds of food, about a thousand pounds more than the 2006 collection. The canned food drive at St. X has collected and distributed more than a million pounds of food in the last decade alone.

Dozens of student volunteers packed food, blankets and gift cards for meat and other fresh food items into boxes for delivery. The packing process continued until all the boxes were filled. On Saturday, Dec. 15, after a 9:00 a.m. Mass in the school cafeteria, student, faculty and alumni volunteers distributed the food across the city.

Representatives from 15 social services agencies loaded their trucks with food from the drive, which also provided trucks full of food for three Appalachian communities in Kentucky and Virginia.

"We had a big push the last couple of days to make the goal," said Matt Kemper of the school's Community Service Office. "We were about 22,000 pounds short of the goal with four days to go. We had some bad weather to overcome on canvass days that kept us from reaching the goal sooner, but we got there. I'm very proud of our kids for coming through. They are helping a lot of people this Christmas with this huge effort of theirs."