Boy Turns Birthday Party Into Toys for Tots Drive
Chase Rowe. Image: Tiffany Rowe
Chase Rowe of Owasso, Okla. has been a participating with his family in the Toys for Tots drive at the nearby Rejoice Church for the past few years, going with his mom to purchase toys and helping distribute them to the needy. His mom, Tiffany Rowe, told ABCNews.com that when she had a conversation with him this year about what he wanted to do for his big eighth birthday on Dec. 17, Chase told her that what he really wanted to do was to give toys to other kids.
“We were discussing with him what we can do for a birthday, when we’re limited on time. We asked him,
‘What do you really want?’ He said he wanted his friends to bring unopened toys to bring to his party to donate,” she said.
Soon a local business, Red Dot Laser Tag, got wind of Chase’s generosity, and decided to donate a mobile laser tag unit for the kids to use at the party. Another local business, Game On Party Truck, followed suit, and on Sunday, Chase’s party was a rousing success.
“We had over 100 kids, and that didn’t include the parents. We had at least 200 people circulated throughout the day,” Tiffany Rowe said.
In total, she said, they collected nearly 500 toys to be donated at the party, where the kids enjoyed popcorn and snow cones — Chase’s only request — and, of course, some cookies.
Rowe said that they welcomed anyone who wanted to come to the event. They circulated flyers to Chase’s classmates, his karate teammates, and through the public schools. She added that Chase is already planning next year’s drive.
“If you ask him what he really wants, he wants kids to get toys for Christmas,” she said. “He’s adamant about that.”
2 comments:
Last year we became secret Santa's to K-Mart shoppers that were at risk of losing their layaways. We go in ask the layaway department if any layaways were at risk of being returned to stock due to non-payment. We pay some of those off and only those that have toys or children's clothing in them. Why should the children of these struggling parents not have a nice Christmas. We're doing it again this year, too.
Ho Ho Ho.
That's a perfect example of my adopted Governments don't live together, people do motto, WC.
At the joint I used to work for in my department there was a well established practice of ordering breakfasts from a local greasy spoon (oh man is their food good) or a bagelry that made deliciously good artery clogging bagel sandwiches. Basically someoe collected the orders and money from whoever wanted someting that day, placed the order and it was delivered. You get the idea.
After a few months I got the idea that, since I made far more money than anyone else in the 50 person department why not make someone's day. So I went to the lady who collected the money and placed the orders and told her to draw a name from a hat and I would pay for that persons breakfast that day. But it had to remain anonymous. It always seemed to make the winner's day.
Over the yeas this snowballed and near the end I was spending and extra $10 or $15 a day buying two or three lottery winners their breakfast. And always always strictly anonymous. During especally ravy overtime months I would pay for the whole order that day.
Eventually the reps started sending a thank you to everyone they thought might be doing this. And then it gave me great joy when the reps started paying it forward. If they won one day then the next THEY would throw money in and have a name drawn that they would pay for that person's breakfast.
The great part was we kept that anonymous for 6 years before they finally figured out who the donor was.
Now, of course, I can't afford anything like that. But a Christmas tradition begun eyars ago with just my daughters has snowballed.
I used to write them long-winded 7 to 8 page letters from Santa Claus eery year both with moral lessons and just plain silly shenanigNA t the North Pole.
Over the years I have collected nearly a dozen neices and nephews, including 5 godchildren.
And each year every one of them gets such a letter wth both a personalized section for the chld praising his accomplishments that year and discussing areas that may need some improvement (share your toys, work harder at math, don't speak out of turn etc) and also a long winded story.
These kids have begun lookng forward to these letters almost as much as they do to Christmas itself.
I gotta say that it take sme 30 or 40 hours to get these out every Christmas and many times I ask mysekf why in the hell I ever started this but when they arrive at our house on Christmas Eve and they start talking about what Santa told them (especially things about their crazy uncle when he was a kid) it makes it all worthwhile.
Have a wonderful Christmas, WC, from one Santa to another.
;-)
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