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A Call To Duty, To Give Kids A Merry Christmas

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: November 30, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - Not every military veteran, not even those who polish up their medals and shrug into old uniform jackets at the ceremonial bidding of the calendar, long for a return to the rigid provisions of their enlisted - or conscripted - service.

Then there is Bob Loring, the preternaturally upbeat personification of the axiom that there are only two types of Marines, active duty and on-call. Loring is among the latter, but you wouldn't know it by his level of activity.

Once again astraddle the rowdy reindeer known, in shorthand, as Toys for Tots, Loring is making war on the specter of yuletide disappointment, applying his characteristic whip hand: wide-eyed, no-prisoners, take-that-hill zeal.

But it is a sad general who directs no troops, and Loring is anything but dour.

And his success hinges on two qualities fundamental to military culture: devotion to duty and chain of command. In a post-draft America, those who have undergone an immersion in these core sciences are in critically tight supply. Tight, possibly even threatened, but not yet endangered.

Not if you know where to look.

Show Loring someone who spends time in a uniform, whether police, deputies, firefighters, nurses, postal employees, Boy Scouts or high school football players, and he will show you someone who understands perfectly well what it is to give or carry out orders, and why responsibility to the group matters.

This well-established principle brings us to the intimate kitchen inside the brick firehouse on Pennsylvania Avenue in San Antonio, and into the company of assorted Pasco Fire Rescue employees.

Lance Bartlett, Rick Someillan, Andrew Hecker and, visiting from Dade City, Tony Hicks, comprise a small but representative platoon in the larger, and sweetly determined, battalion that rallies in (gratifyingly) increasing numbers every year. For all the unspeakable seriousness of their day jobs, words do not fail when describing their allegiance for the annual (full title, with bugles blaring) East Pasco Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots campaign.

"We are blessed by having a county employer," says Bartlett, 52, a captain and, on this recent morning, the shift commander. "With the job market the way it is, and the economy the way it is, we don't have to worry whether our jobs will be here tomorrow.

"There's a saying in the fire department: 'We don't get rained out, just rained on.'

"

Add the nature of their secure employment - it routinely brings them into contact with distraught folks who have just watched everything swallowed by flames, on-the-edge folks who didn't have too much in the first place - and the result is a predisposition toward lending a hand after the dousing is finished.

"It doesn't hurt to help," Bartlett says. Besides, there are the demonstrated lengths to which Loring is willing to stretch as a recruiter for his Toys for Tots fleet. Bartlett explains, "We didn't like to see a grown man cry."

First Saturday Campaign

What began as a localized effort centered in Dade City has demonstrated itself to be endlessly replicable, in accordance with Loring's master plan. This year, firefighter efforts on behalf of Toys for Tots will be felt in every corner of Pasco County. Zephyrhills Fire Rescue has come on board, and the surging West Pasco chapter also has tapped this mother lode of volunteerism.

In the Loring scheme, firefighters take ownership of toy deposit boxes, placing them, collecting their contents and then reclaiming them when the campaign concludes. They're central to organizing distribution centers and populating them on the appointed morning.

They're also integral to the collection, sorting and stowing of the U.S. Postal Service's annual "first Saturday" event, when mail carriers return from their routes laden with (new, unwrapped) toys left beside mailboxes by their customers.

Toys For Tots Wants You

That would be you. And the event is the upcoming Saturday. New. Unwrapped. Toy(s). Beside your mailbox.

Know this: Toys for Tots rules declare as eligible for their program every student whose family receives some sort of governmental aid, down to and including participation in the free-and-reduced-price lunch program. In Pasco, that adds up to about half the entire student population, or more than 27,000 youngsters.

In the eastern half that Loring oversees, the director's ambition is rather less expansive, something hovering on the high side of 4,500 children. Still, filling that many wish lists will require close to 10,000 toys, games, balls, bicycles and such, plus stocking stuffers.

Ours is light duty. The sometimes-literal heavy lifting falls to your fire-rescue teams. "It works like this," says Hicks, 45, a captain at the county's Dade City outpost. "When trucks come in that need stuff loaded on or loaded off, we tell the guys who are coming off shift, 'Stay here.' And the ones who are coming on, 'Come on with me.'

"

Last year, a truck carrying 370 cases of Hess-brand toy trucks (18 to a case, including batteries) showed up. "If it weren't for the strong backs of the firefighters," says Hecker, 39, his hand reaching reflexively for his sacroiliac, "we couldn't have moved them all."

A Shortage Is Possible

Who benefits? You might be astonished. Toys for Tots, which applies tight screens and cross-checks, is not - as Loring says a neighbor once complained - an enabler of poverty. "I'm just trying to help kids have Christmas," Loring says.

This year, some of those kids may be the offspring of volunteers themselves. Bartlett's praise for job security notwithstanding, a half-dozen fire-rescue families, hammered by the souring economy (a spouse out of a job) or illness, or both, have made application to Toys for Tots.

Not without cause, then, does Loring declare himself "scared to death" that there will be more kids than gifts to go around. Laments Santa's Head Elf, "I'm having nightmares."

The situation calls to mind what Bartlett says about himself and the folks with whom he works. "What we are are potential heroes. We hope when the time comes, we'll be ready."

As much could be said of us as we mark the hard times between today and the first Saturday of December. On that morning, what waits by our mailboxes will describe not just the generosity, but also much about the courage of the folks who dwell within.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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