Hot dog sale returns to support Cranberry library
CRANBERRY TWP — The Friends of the Cranberry Public Library served up snacks for a cause Friday afternoon in the library’s courtyard reading garden.
The “Hot Dog Fridays” tradition, which started five years ago as a way to raise funds for the Cranberry Public Library, invites families to grab a meal of a hot dog, chips and bottle of water for $4 and enjoy the sunshine while supporting the library’s efforts. The group intends to return to the courtyard on all the Fridays in June in July, excluding July 15.
Each year, the Friends of the Cranberry Public Library donates money to the library, raised through events like this and the annual book sale in the fall, said organization secretary Juliann Tasick.
“We can buy carts, blackboards or whiteboards. (We’ve bought) a big chest for papers and whatnot,” she said. “A lot of times, we have given them an amount, $5,000 or $7,000, whatever it is, to do what they have to do with it.”
This year’s event featured a new addition — a used children’s book and DVD sale run by Seneca Valley student Declan Ward, whose grandmother, Pat Ducharme, is vice president of the Friends group.
“The books were brought in by a book drive one day, and the Friends of the Cranberry Library helped to organize these,” said Declan, 17, who is running the sale as part of a senior project for Seneca Valley. “I’m helping to manage and run some of these, by stocking and choosing which (books) go out.”
Ducharme said the hot dog sale first returned for the season during the first week of June.
“This has always been such a popular thing — we love doing it,” she said. “The parents like it, because the kids come from their crafts here, and then come out here. We’ve always tried to do things to help the library, because all our money goes back to donations for the library.”
