Toys for Tots

About this event

A Harley-Davidson dealership named after bees takes some explaining. The shop opened under a duller name at the turn of the century and was renamed a decade and a half later, after a customer mentioned he had come to Medina to buy a beehive; the staff, hunting for something local, found that the town's beekeeping trade is the reason its school teams are all named for bees. Hence the sting. The programme the collection feeds began with one domestic conversation of its own: in 1947 a Marine Corps Reserve major, Bill Hendricks, was asked by his wife Diane to find an agency that would take a few dolls she had made by hand, could not find one, and was told to start one himself. He and his reserve unit gathered five thousand toys that first year, and the Commandant made it a national job the year after; Walt Disney, a friend, drew the first poster. In this county the toys end up at five high schools, which is where families collect them before Christmas — nearly thirteen thousand toys to a little over eighteen hundred children on the last count published.