It's that time of year again! The United States Marine Corps League Gaffney-Oglesby Detachment 1328 is joining forces with Kiwanis International and its subsidiaries, Copper Country Cruizers, St. Francis Newman Center, Coca-Cola, and other community churches and organizations for the 2014 Toys for Tots™ campaign. We are calling on our citizens to contribute to a cause that dates back nearly seventy years.

In the fall of 1947 Diane Hendricks was searching for an organization that would take her homemade doll and give it anonymously to a needy child at Christmas. Upon finding no such organization on post-World War II Los Angeles, her husband, Marine Corps Reservist Major Bill Hendricks launched a pilot project to collect and distribute toys to area children. After successfully reaching 5,000 children that first Christmas, Major Hendricks dubbed the cause "Toys for Tots" and initiated a nationwide campaign in 1948 to "bring the joy of Christmas to America's needy children." Hendricks was able to benefit from his position as director of Public Relations for Warner Brothers Studio by having Walt Disney Studios design the red toy train logo.

Since the late 1970s the organization only collects new toys as administrators felt that the goal of giving the children a message of hope could best be conveyed with a "shiny new toy" rather than someone else's "leftovers," and in September 1991, the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation was founded, enabling individual donors to take a charitable deduction on their income tax returns. The Toys for Tots Program and the Marines have distributed hundreds of millions of toys for nearly 70 years leaving them the unchallenged leader in looking after less fortunate children at Christmas.

To help a child this Christmas, please leave a new, unwrapped toy for a child ages birth through seventeen in one of the boxes located in the following locations before December 10:
St. Francis Newman Center (13th Street)
Indian Hills Baptist Church (Hwy 180 East)
Infant Jesus Catholic Church (Hurley)
Episcopal Church (6th Street)
Curves (Memory Lane)
Silver City Fire Department Station 1 (Hudson Street)
Silver City Fire Department Station 2 (32nd Street)

Danna Lopez: 590-4799 Robert Lopez: 313-9369 Carla Marquez: 574-5475

Thank you for making this a Christmas of hope for our children!

Toys will be distributed on Saturday, December 20 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m at the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center. Also, if someone knows of a family in need, call any of the above numbers.