The Father Ray Foundation marked 18 years since founder Raymond Brennan’s death by donating 1,400 survival bags for Pattaya’s struggling public.
Unable to host the usual memorial service and fair due to coronavirus-control restrictions, the foundation instead gave away food and necessities to residents of five Pattaya communities impacted by those same restrictions Aug. 16.
Residents from the Laem Rachavej, Paniadchang, 5 December, Rung Reang and North Pattaya communities gratefully received the donations at service begun with remembrance to Brennan.
Foundation President Peter Pattarapong Srivorakul placed flowers before statues of Father Ray and Aurora Sribuapan, former head of the Redemptorist School for Persons with Disabilities. The school since has been renamed Redemptorist Technological College.
Pattarapong said the health crisis made it an easy choice to change the annual month-long remembrance of Brennan from one where the foundation receives financial donations to one where the foundation gives donations to those in need.
The food bags were funded by the private sector, including students from affiliate schools and foundations.
Ray Brennan was born Dec. 7, 1932, in Chicago. He arrived in Thailand in 1961 as a volunteer to assist impoverished and disabled people, and from that day until his last, he devoted himself to assisting Thailand’s poor.
He established the Orphanage Foundation in the early 1970s after a baby was left in his care. In the early 1980s, a young deaf boy was left at the orphanage and Brennan was unable to find a local school for him. This led to the opening of the Sotpattana Kindergarten School for the Deaf in 1983.
Fr. Ray passed away on Aug. 16, 2003.
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