VFW 6747 Toy Run

About this event

The post that runs this one is named for a man who did not come home. Sergeant Frank Lillard, a Monterey County soldier, died on the Bataan Death March in 1942, and four years later ninety veterans of two world wars chartered VFW Post 6747 in his name, on 15 April 1946, under a commander called Harold J. Gill. The post has kept a habit of doing things in person rather than on paper: with a sponsored scout troop it plants more than three hundred and fifty flags at King City Cemetery for Memorial Day, Veterans Day and the Fourth, and it sends holiday food boxes up to Fort Hunter Liggett. The toy run gathers at San Lorenzo Park, which sits off Highway 101 on the banks of the Salinas River in the foothills of the Santa Lucias and also holds a seven-building farming museum — the 1887 La Gloria schoolhouse and the 1903 King City depot among them. The riding out of town is the real draw. Metz Road drops in on smooth curves with almost no traffic, and Lonoak Road east loses its centre line entirely.