PDA

View Full Version : Christmas stars Marines as Santa



thedrifter
12-23-06, 07:58 AM
Christmas stars Marines as Santa
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, December 23, 2006

Marla McCreary didn't know how she would buy Christmas presents this year for her three children.

"We really don't have the money," McCreary, 28, of Wilkinsburg, said recently, after receiving three huge bags of toys from the Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots program.

She was overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers.

"This is a huge blessing. ... I'm really going to cry. This will mean everything to them," she said.

Before the program closed last weekend for this holiday season, Toys for Tots provided more than 100,000 toys to about 30,000 needy children in Allegheny County, said Gunnery Sgt. Roger McKinnon, 39, program coordinator.

In Westmoreland County, 3,466 children each received four toys from Toys for Tots, said Doug Hurst, who coordinates the program for The Marine Corps League of Greater Greensburg, Detachment 834.

Nationwide, Toys for Tots handed out about 19 million toys to needy children this year, said Bill Grein, a retired Marine Corps major who serves as vice president of marketing and development for the Toys for Tots Foundation. That's up from the 18.5 million toys the organization gave to 7.4 million kids last year.

"It makes me kind of wish Christmas came every 18 months instead of 12," Grein said.

This is a different kind of mission for the Marine Corps Reservists from Military Police Company B of North Versailles. Members of the unit have been deployed to Iraq three times.

"Definitely, you get a sense of personal gratification for it," McKinnon said.

Toys for Tots takes an army of Marines and volunteers to keep it running. Thirty-six Marines who returned from Iraq this summer "pretty much run the warehouse," said McKinnon, who served in Operation Desert Storm.

Toys were dropped off at 75 locations around Pittsburgh. Moving companies donated hundreds of large boxes used to contain the toys once they were separated by age and gender. Other people helped raise money to buy toys.

"It takes a tremendous amount of volunteer work and community donations," said McKinnon. An ever-changing roster of volunteers contributes untold hours to collect, sort and distribute toys.

Volunteers like Theresa Germany say they welcome the chance to give back to the Marines.

"One year, a couple of the Marines just got back from Iraq and said they hadn't even had a home-cooked meal. I cooked for them," said Germany, of Penn Hills, who has volunteered with Toys for Tots for 13 years.

But sometimes, even these combat-hardened Santas have to say no.

"We know they are going to run out of toys before they run out of kids," Grein said.

That's hard on the Marines on the front lines of the toy brigade.

"You can hear the emotion in their voices when we tell them we have no more," Grein said.

Added to the North Versailles unit's duties will be relocating the Toys for Tots warehouse from the old St. Francis Hospital to space near the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin being provided by the South Hills Industrial Park.

The Toys for Tots program began in 1947 when Maj. Bill Hendricks and a group of Marine Reservists in Los Angeles collected and distributed 5,000 toys to needy children.

The idea came from Hendricks' wife, Diane, who had handcrafted a Raggedy Ann doll and asked her husband to deliver it to an organization that could get it to a needy child at Christmas. When he found no such organization existed, she suggested he start one.

The Marine Corps adopted the program in 1948 and expanded it nationwide. Since its beginning, Toys for Tots has distributed more than 351 million toys to 166 million needy children.

Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5646.

Ellie