Volunteers use donated wood to craft gifts for kids

As Jay Morris describes how he and a bunch of helpers use chunks of donated wood to create children’s toys each Christmas, one of those volunteers interrupts.

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“Jay, we got a wobbly,” neighbour Steve Wood hollers out from across the small woodshop in Morris’ basement in Lawrence, Kansas.Just like a head elf would do at the North Pole, Morris stops mid-sentence, apologises for the “red alert,” and heads to the wooden toy delivery truck that needs a little attention. After a bit of tweaking and dabbing glue on a wheel, Morris deems another worthy, sturdy and ready. And that’s a good thing. In just a few days, Morris will begin delivering the 115 trucks he and his crew have made this season to four area Toys for Tots drives, including the one that serves the Kansas City area.

These delivery trucks, with tambour doors — made of wood slats strung together with bungee cord that allows them to roll up or down as the door is opened and closed — go to families that have signed up to receive toys from the annual holiday Marine charity event for their children to open at Christmas. This year, Toys for Tots is filling a record 60,000 requests in the Kansas City area alone and every donation counts. Before the collecting even began last month, workers at the Overland Park Convention Center — the region’s largest donation hub for the Marine toy drive — knew they'd be seeing the wooden trucks. They just didn’t know what design the creator had come up with this time. “It’s so cool that somebody is putting in this much effort to give kids a nice Christmas,” says Britaney Wehrmeister, of the Overland Park Convention Center, who marvels at the trucks each year. Yet she didn’t even know who made them until she tracked Morris down a week ago.