For the third year,
troopers from all over Indiana came out on the Saturday prior to Christmas to
make the holiday brighter for over 300 Indiana children and their families.
Although the final count is not in at press time, it is believed that
approximately 100 uniformed troopers, some joined by their spouses, showed up at
40 Wal-Mart stores in Indiana to shop with the deserving youngsters for new
clothing and toys.
The 1999 program invitations were extended to every elementary school in the Indiana public school system. As in our previous two programs, schools were asked to provide the ITA with the name of a family within their school system that was having some type of personal difficulty at the holiday season. The criteria included loss of home or job, illness, death, medical expenses, or single or foster parenthood. We asked the school representatives to give us the name of a family who was looking for an extended “helping hand”, rather than a handout. In the event that we received more than one entry from a county, a random-drawing was held to select one family to represent each county in the state.
To make the shopping easier for the selected families, this year we added 10 additional Wal-Mart locations to our program, using 40 of the 62 Indiana Wal-Marts for our program. Cooperation by the Wal-Mart representatives was excellent and many locations provided additional gifts, visits with Santa, dinners for the families, fruit baskets and other complimentary items to enhance our program.
Although we did not ask the schools to provide us with their families situations, many did and they included many touching situations where, after there was food on the table and the bills were being paid, there was little or no money left for new clothing and toys for their children. Some were suffering from loss of their home due to fire, some had children with life-threatening diseases, some were from homes where one of the parents was struggling with serious illness, some were children being cared for by either the mother or father alone, by grandparents, or in a foster home.
At the appointed hour, 10:00 a.m., the children, their families, the troopers, and the Wal-Mart associates all came together to spend an hour or so together shopping for new clothing and toys – all compliments of the Indiana Troopers Association. Each family was given two $100 Gift Certificates, to be equally divided between new clothing and new toys.
One trooper who participated shared with us that he shopped with three little boys and when they reached the checkout they were each stacking their individual selections on the counter. As the last item was taken from the shopping cart, one of the young lads looked sadly up at the trooper and said, “Gee, you didn’t get nothing, did you?” The seasoned trooper said that he “had a big lump in his throat and had to look away for a moment,” being so touched by the youngster’s comment. Another trooper told us that the mother in one of the families broke down in tears as they approached the checkout lane, saying that she didn’t know how she was going to provide gifts for her family – until we came along.
It was a great day for many deserving children across
our great state, and from the accounts we received, it is unclear just who had
the most fun that day – the children or the troopers.
The Year 2000 program is tentatively set for Saturday, December 16, 2000.