How this retro Tumwater car club is helping these small-town charities, and why

If there is one thing the Mid-Nite Timers car club has done since it was founded in the 1950s, it is help others.

A group of high school-age boys with a shared enthusiasm for cars — and racing them — started the club to keep each other out of trouble. They promoted safety on the highway, driving responsibly and paying it forward. It was 1953, the heyday of the hot rod era, in the Tumwater area.

Now, the Mid-Nite Timers are a group of older men and women who get together Friday nights in two members’ Tumwater garages-turned-clubhouses. They still share an enthusiasm for both cars and helping others, as seen in the thousands of dollars, pounds of food and other donations they have raised for charities over the years.

“Car clubs were, young people got together and probably got up to no good,” member Nancy Mayer told The Olympian. “And the philanthropy sort of evolved into those people growing up and wanting to still hang out and have a purpose that was positive.”

But two of the groups the club supports are not in Tumwater, or even Thurston County: the Montesano Food Bank in Grays Harbor County and the Kitten Rescue of Mason County .

Why Montesano Food Bank?

When the Mid-Nite Timers went to the Thurston County Food Bank with some food they wanted to donate, member John Buenzli told The Olympian they were turned away.

So they went to the food bank in Montesano, which Buenzli said has fellow car enthusiasts and car shows the whole city gets involved in. Donations from these car shows go to Montesano Food Bank.

Volunteers at the food bank told the Mid-Nite Timers they would take their food — all four pickup trucks full of it.

“It was so much,” Buenzli said. “They couldn’t believe it.”

That was at least 10 years ago. Since then, the Mid-Nite Timers have donated 1,500 pounds of food, collected at the club’s weekly meetings, at least twice a year.

One pound of food is worth about $1.87, Doug Iverson, the Montesano Food Bank director, told The Olympian. That means the Mid-Nite Timers have donated about $56,100 worth of food.

“Having groups like the Mid-Nite Timers who, from a total different community, come down and donate the amount they do — it is just unbelievable,” Iverson said.

Montesano Food Bank is a smaller food bank in the Grays Harbor County seat. The team of 12 volunteers serves about 54 families a week, a number Iverson said has doubled since last summer.

The food bank receives some food from the state and federal governments, Iverson said. But most of its food comes from community donors, whose donations allow the food bank to, despite its size, hand out more food than other facilities.

Though the Mid-Nite Timers are one of these donors.

“Here they are, they’re looking out for other folks, by collecting the food and so forth. And they’re not looking for attention,” Iverson said. “They just do it out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Montesano Food Bank, at 213 Spruce Ave W. in the town just north of U.S. Highway 12, is open from 1 to 3 p.m. on the first four Fridays of each month.

Why the Kitten Rescue of Mason County?

Donna Cole was a member of the Mid-Nite Timers, a volunteer at the Kitten Rescue of Mason County and the reason the club started donating to the rescue. Cole stopped volunteering some time ago, but the Mid-Nite Timers never stopped donating.

The club hosts two car shows a year in Tumwater, one every Memorial Day Sunday and one the day after Thanksgiving. They call the first car show the Pile-Up-on-the-Hill, and the second the No-Turkey-Allowed potluck.

The proceeds from both go to the Kitten Rescue of Mason County.

“Every penny that we make is for the cats, in one way or another,” Kitten Rescue director Deedre Sigmond told The Olympian.

The Kitten Rescue offers adoption and foster care, spays and neuters kittens, and provides vaccinations, feral fixes and more. The only cat shelter with a physical location in Mason County, its team of about 50 serves all of the county’s cities, reservations and other communities. Only five of them, including three part-timers, the assistant director and Sigmond herself, are paid; the rest are volunteers.

Besides one grant, Sigmond said the Kitten Rescue does not receive funding. Right now, it is home to around 225 cats and about $125 “in the hole” for each one.

“Everybody wants help. Nobody wants to step up and help,” Sigmond said.

The Mid-Nite Timers do.

They raised about $2,000 at last year’s potluck and about $3,000 at this year’s pile-up for a total of $5,000, the club’s annual average. Over the last 11 years, Buenzli said the club has raised at least $30,000 to $40,000, which paid for the Kitten Rescue’s supplies, bills, utilities and maintenance costs.

“Without that $5,000, that puts me in the hole more,” Sigmond said. “So anyone that does a fundraiser for us, which generates income and financial assets for us, is a blessing.”

The Kitten Rescue, at 420 S. WA-3 in Shelton, is open from 7 a.m. to noon and 6 to 8 p.m. daily.