11 people killed at the Tree of Life synagogue<\/a>\u00a0seven years ago Monday.<\/p>\n“It’s just a wonderful thing to be a part of,” Jessica Anderson of Whitehall said.<\/p>\n
Anderson brought her three kids to Sunday morning’s event: a 14-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 4-year-old.<\/p>\n
“On my way to church this morning, we decided that we were going to stop and make sure we got to volunteer,” Anderson said.<\/p>\n
They and others got to work and packed dental kits. The goal was to pack 1,000 of them. They’re for the dental patients at Catholic Charities Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
“We serve over 30,000 clients through our six-county footprint at Catholic Charities,” said Angie Zambito Hill, chief development officer at Catholic Charities Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Zambito Hill said the work done on Sunday will help those clients get daily service.<\/p>\n
Service is something Peg Durachko and her first husband, Dr. Rich Gottfried, valued immensely.<\/p>\n
“He and I both volunteered as dentists back when Catholic Charities was located on Ninth St.,” Durachko said.<\/p>\n
Durachko was referring to Dr. Gottfried. He was killed in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting on Oct. 27, 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday’s volunteer project is in his memory, as is the dental clinic on the third floor of the Catholic Charities building downtown.<\/p>\n
“His legacy relates to the way that we serve our clients with compassion and dignity,” Zambito Hill said.<\/p>\n
Durachko said she knows Dr. Gottfried would be honored to have his name connected to the facility, part of an organization the two of them gave years to.<\/p>\n
“It’s very heartwarming to provide something that we were trained to do that would help another person,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sunday did not require as much training.<\/p>\n
“It was just kind of a simple task,” Anderson said.<\/p>\n
That simple task continues Dr. Gottfried’s legacy throughout Catholic Charities: one of service, but also one of bringing faiths together. Dr. Gottfried was Jewish and gave so much of his time to a Catholic organization.<\/p>\n
“His spirit is still here,” Durachko said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers came to Catholic Charities in Downtown Pittsburgh to pack dental care kits for those in need on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,11745],"class_list":["post-16208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-tree-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}