Helping others comes naturally to 16-year-old Jack Kidd of Hancock.

“It’s awesome,” said his stepfather, Mike Crowe. “He’s been a very perceptive kid for a long time.”

Jack has helped his family buy and deliver turkey dinners for Thanksgiving, and when he attended Great Brook School in Antrim, he realized that one of the friends he was playing basketball wasn’t going to have any Christmas gifts, so he got presents for the family.

“I just saw how easy it was to help, and it didn’t take much time out of your day,” he said.

Jack is now a junior at New Hampton School in New Hampton, and his latest endeavor is Kidd Gloves, donating baseball gloves and buckets of balls to the Mt. Monadnock Little League. After an expansion for 2024, the league will include New Ipswich, Peterborough, Jaffrey, Rindge, Greenville, Mason, Sharon, Temple, Wilton, Winchendon, Lyndeborough, Greenfield, Hancock, Bennington, Antrim and Francestown.

According to league president Nick Hill, registrations have increased from just under 400 last year to 485 this year, and that since the league posted an announcement about Kidd Gloves on Facebook, it received two requests for gloves. 

“We are very excited about the partnership with Kidd Gloves and the opportunity for our kids to have gloves that don't have them,” he stated. “I think it's a phenomenal initiative by Jack and looking forward to serving the kids we can with this fine donation.”

Jack is working with his family’s foundation, the Steven W. Crowe Foundation, which since 1988 has made donations to programs with special needs, focusing on the education, health, welfare and athletics in the ConVal region. The foundation is in honor of Steven Crowe, a Peterborough native and ConVal High School graduate who died in a car accident in 1987.

Mike Crowe said he and Jack had talked over the winter about getting mittens and gloves for children and veterans, but it didn’t come to fruition. The idea for baseball gloves came when Crowe told Jack that Mt. Monadnock Little League needed supplies, and Jack noticed the costs of baseball gloves at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

“I thought that was a good thing we might be able to help them with,” he said.

Jack said he only planned to donate a couple gloves, but wound up getting 20 from Dick’s, along with the baseballs. He got both left- and right-handed gloves.

Crowe delivered the gloves and balls over the weekend, and said he hopes Kidd Gloves “has a life of its own” and can expand to the area around New Hampton. As for Jack, he said he’ll keep looking to find ways he can help.