MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- Despite a couple of major challenges, the Toys for Tots program that wrapped up Dec. 21, 2013, collected and distributed about 130,000 toys, a little below the previous year’s numbers but enough to meet demand.
The program, which brings donated Christmas gifts to tens of thousands of needy children, from Arlington down to Caroline County, is Marine Corps Base Quantico’s biggest community outreach effort of the year.
Every year it’s a massive undertaking, during which the Marines of the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, who run the program with the help of the Community Relations Section of the base Public Affairs Office, depend heavily on volunteer support. A shortage of manpower, combined with a logistically difficult location, only increased that reliance this year.
“If it weren’t for the volunteers, this program would have fallen on its face this year, definitely,” said Sgt. Jeremy Olson, who took over as the coordinator after the original coordinator had to go on leave. In all, the Toys for Tots staff dwindled from six down to three due to emergencies and family events.
Further complicating matters, the warehouse in Woodbridge that the program used last year is now occupied by a paying customer, so the base accepted an offer to use the warehouse of the Freelance-Star newspaper building in Fredericksburg, a location that posed some geographic challenges.
Most of the events and collection points that gather toy donations are north of Woodbridge, while Fredericksburg is more than 20 miles south of Woodbridge, Olson explained. For Marines volunteering to support events, this meant driving from the base to Fredericksburg to pick up supplies, then north to points in Fairfax County, Arlington or Alexandria. After the event, it was back to Fredericksburg to drop off toys and then, finally, back to Quantico, bringing round trips to upwards of 130 miles.
“Especially in holiday traffic, nobody wants to sit for three hours coming back from Herndon,” Olson said.
The number of events dropped from 150 the previous year to 135.
The distance also virtually eliminated the 4th LAR Bn. Marines’ ability to make pickups from collection points, rounds that cost almost $20,000 in gas last year, he added. Many donors were reluctant to make the trip as well.
That was where volunteers came in. One business owner rented a 26-foot truck and filled it up two or three times, Olson said. Another volunteered to pick up and distribute toys throughout his area. The Fairfax County and Prince William County fire departments also delivered all the toys they collected.
The Marines also relied on volunteers to help sort toys at the warehouse, especially during the final weeks. The collection drive starts at the beginning of October, and toy distribution starts in mid-November, but every year, the majority of donations roll in during the last week or two, swamping the warehouse.
“[Donors] get excited about it, and rightfully so,” said Sgt. Justin Minnick, the warehouse manager. “They want to hold out and see how many toys they can get. That’s the bottom line.”
On Dec. 20, the afternoon before the program came to a close, about 20 volunteers of all ages sorted mountains of toys by their target gender and age range and loaded them onto trucks. Olson described the previous two weeks as “hectic.”
Since mid-November, the Marines had arrived at the warehouse at 8 a.m., seven days a week and stayed until the last Marine volunteers delivered toys from faraway events.
In the final stretch, there were the heaps of toys to manage, too.
“We’ll go three-fourths of the season just scraping by for toys, and then in the last week and a half or two weeks, it’ll just drop on us,” Olson said.
Organizers try to give two toys to each child, and organizations that had only received one toy per child, due to shortages early on, were returning for the other half of their orders.
The volunteers sorting toys on the afternoon of Dec. 20 were all civilians, but many Marines help at the warehouse as well.
Community Relations Officer Wilma Vaughn, who also helps with the program, noted that the base command had just issued a request to all the colonels on base, asking them to send Marines to help close out the warehouse. “Command support has been phenomenal,” she said. “Support at that level makes this program successful.”
Most of the volunteers, however, are regulars who help out every year.
“This is what you hear in here,” Vaughn said as volunteers joked with each other while sorting and hefting bags of toys. “It’s hard physical labor, and over that you hear laughter. Everybody loves working this program.”
— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com