Dec 20, 2006 By Josh Krysak 4 min read

More than 1,300 area children will likely have a happier holiday thanks to the efforts of one charitable organization and dozens of volunteers. The U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program handed out hundreds of toys to local families Monday and Tuesday at the Uniontown Mall in the culmination of months of collecting the presents and working to organize them.

“We want to give them to the families for the children on Christmas morning,” area coordinator Daniel Martin said Tuesday, as he wheeled four large boxes of sorted toys on a dolly. “We have met the need providing two major toys and stocking stuffers for these children.”

Martin, commandant of the Laurel Highlands Detachment 732, Marine Corps League, said that the reason for the programs’ local success is a combination of the charitable spirit of those donating toys and those donating time and effort to make the drive possible.

“The people are wonderful,” Martin said. “This is all possible through the kindness of the givers and the hard work of the volunteers.”

According to Martin, there were more than 100 drop off sites across the county for the program where hundreds of area residents and businesses donated new toys as well as financial support for the program.

Martin said that after all donations were collected, the toys were then brought to the Uniontown Mall where they were sorted for children by age and sex.

In the store converted into a toy-sorting center Tuesday afternoon, blue tarpaulins, draped from the ceiling, created a divider between dozens of area residents in line for the gifts and the sorting stations, clogged with everything from Barbie dolls to Magna Doodles.

And while the volunteers hauling stuffed animals and board games by the bagful to the front of the store looked exhausted, they said they wouldn’t want it any other way.

“This is my job. I work with kids in Young Inspirations an after school program and I also have kids of my own,” Dell Hunter of Uniontown said. “But this time of year it is important to help someone else’s kids because everybody is struggling and you just don’t know what their Christmas is going to be like. And maybe, we can help make it better.”

Martin said the toys were handed out to more than 1,300 parents of children up to 12 years of age Monday and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Mall.

Our goal was two major toys per child,’ Martin said noting that “major” denotes a toy costing at least $10. The toys are given to children of low income parents.

When registering the children, the parents were required to provide an Access or EBT (electronic business transaction) card or medical card for the children as well as photo identification for the parent. And parents were required to bring a registration paper with them to the toy distribution with the volunteers randomly selecting gifts for the children.

The Toys for Tots program was established in 1947, when U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Bill Hendricks and a group of Marine Corps reservists in Los Angeles collected and distributed 5,000 toys to needy children.

The idea came from Bill’s wife, Diane Hendricks, according to the Toys for Tots website. In the fall of 1947, she handcrafted a Raggedy Ann doll and asked Bill to deliver the doll to an organization, which would give it to a needy child at Christmas. When Bill determined that no agency existed, Diane told Bill that he should start one.

According to the website, Bob Hope, John Wayne, Doris Day, Lorrie Morgan, Tim Allen, Kenny Rogers, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush have promoted the program.

During the 2005 Toys for Tots campaign, 18.5 million toys were distributed to 7.5 million children.