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Photos courtesy of Christmas for Kids.
Trussville firefighters pick up gift donations from a local company in December 2022 during the annual Christmas for Kids project.
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Photos courtesy of Christmas for Kids.
The toys, bikes and other gifts that the Trussville Fire & Rescue Department gathers for Christmas for Kids are distributed to elementary and middle school students in the Trussville school system.
The toy aisles at Wal-Mart and Target have nothing on the single room at the Trussville Fire & Rescue’s administration building.
The “toy shop,” as it is called, is hardly cliché. It may appear as more of a woodshop on the surface, due to the rows of three-tiered wooden shelves, two-by-four after two-by-four forming the room’s perimeter from floor to ceiling. It’s what is on those shelves — overflowing those shelves, even , that truly makes it a toy shop.
There are enough remote-controlled cars to recreate the car scramble scene from “2 Fast 2 Furious,” enough scooters to field a 25-child race. There are one million puzzle pieces and enough board games to stave off boredom for a year. There is a huge cardboard box labeled “More Nerf Guns” and enough miniature dump trucks, excavators and cement mixers to take over the litany of construction projects ongoing in Trussville.
It may be just one room, but there’s a whole lot to it. It’s the hub for the Trussville Fire & Rescue’s Christmas for Kids program, an endeavor that started in 1979. The program aims to collect new, unwrapped toys and other gifts to donate to underprivileged children in Trussville.
“It’s completely run by firefighters and firefighter spouses, mostly the spouses,” said Trussville Fire Chief Tim Shotts. “And it's all volunteer; there's very little overhead other than just our postage to send out letters. So, nobody takes a salary. Nobody takes anything. It's all done by volunteers.”
One of those volunteers is Nikki Franklin, wife of Trussville Fire & Rescue training officer Chris Franklin. The couple has been married 21 years. Guess how many years Nikki Franklin has volunteered with Christmas for Kids? She’s on the program’s board of directors.
“It is amazing,” she said. “It's amazing on give-out day when these mamas and daddies and grandmas come to pick up their toys
for those babies. And they're in tears. It makes everything you do, makes all of that work, worth it. And that reminds you why you do it.”
The work is not light. Each October, the Christmas for Kids board of directors sends letters to all three Trussville elementary schools and Hewitt-Trussville Middle School. Potential recipients are cut off at eighth grade, but a high school student wouldn’t be turned down if a circumstance meant need. That letter includes a pre-registration form that parents or guardians fill out.
In early November, volunteers meet to review the returned forms. Families are called to come in to fill out applications. Then comes the list. You know the one.
“We go down the list and make sure we understand everything that’s written on it,” Franklin said. “Then we do the best we can to fill that list.”
In November, letters are sent to Trussville businesses asking for assistance and donations. By the time mid-December comes, give-out day happens.
“We also have been thankful the last couple of years to work with the schools and receive some of their canned food drive donations, because we try to give each family, in addition to their toy bags, we try to give them a bag or a box of food for at least one meal,” Franklin said. “That's our goal, to give them enough for at least one meal. We usually go buy a turkey to go in there. So, they get a turkey and then they get canned food items. And we give them all that during pickup.”
There are 75 to 100 children helped by Christmas for Kids annually, Franklin estimated. While the approval process has already been completed for this year, with give-out day fast approaching, there is always next year. Shotts said the Trussville Fire & Rescue Christmas For Kids Facebook page is a helpful resource, as is the program’s Venmo page. Donations via check are acceptable as well. Donations of new, unwrapped toys can be made at any of the three fire departments in Trussville or the administration building on Cherokee Drive.
“I really just enjoy doing it all,” Franklin said. “I love watching the moms’ faces when they pick up the toys. You know, the grandmoms’ faces, the grandmothers who thought they were finished raising kids, and somehow, they ended up raising more kids than they planned. And they are the true angels.”
There are true angels year after year in this program. Shotts remembered five or six years ago, he was picking up some last-minute gift items for Christmas for Kids at a local guitar shop. Shotts isn’t exactly a six-string prodigy, so he was asking what all he needed. A customer approached him and asked what he was doing. That customer paid for all the accessories.
Another year, last-minute bicycles needed purchasing at Academy Sports & Outdoors. A man walked up to Shotts and handed him $100.
“So yeah, it's a neat program,” he said. “And we don't get to see the result because, you know, families spend time together on Christmas, and we don't get to see that. But we have the luxury of knowing that [these] kids had a good Christmas because of what we did. And that's a big deal for us.”
