Coats for Kids

As most everyone in my circle of life knows, I volunteer for The Salvation Army as a disaster radio communicator.  Yesterday, my team of radio operators worked Coats for Kids in Indy...during which TSA gave away over 4,000 coats to children.  And if you don't think that 4,500 children plus their parents/guardians under one roof isn't as close to a disaster as you can get, read on!

Coats for Kids provides contributed new and "gently used" winter coats for anyone who shows up with children in tow.  Channel 13 provides the media attention; Tuchman Cleaners dry cleans all of the contributions; and The Salvation Army does ALL the rest.  It is an enormous task!  This takes place once a year at the State Fairgrounds.  Essentially, patrons who show up are given tickets with numbers at the door--one ticket per child.  Then the numbers are called for people to enter the coat rack area, and they are taken around by volunteer escorts.  Each child is allowed two coats...a lightweight jacket, and a heavier one, or snowsuit.  Every coat/jacket is tried on, etc.  It takes time, and the wait is usually 1-2 hours. 

What happens when one expects young children to wait in a huge enclosed area with no seating for 1-2 hours?  Chaos!  There was no food on the premises.  Children get hungry.  Children fall asleep.  Children run and punch and get lost and cry.  About 1/3rd of the folks were white, another third Hispanic, and the last third African-American.  Some are patient and smiling.  Some impatient.  Only one was abusive.  We had to escort one small group of young men out because they were, essentially, trying to steal coats.  (Older kids--late teens/early 20's--no adult chaperone, etc.)  Someone defecated in the parking lot.  Drinks were spilled. A couple of "lost" children cried for their mommies.  One family group got so rambunctious that I had to ask them to stop or "take it outside".  (The mother was in the midst of it.  She said, "We do this all the time at home!"  Later, I discovered a large hole in a wall near where they were.  <sigh>)

Salvation Army's new logo is "Doing the most good".  Sometimes, doing the most good means "doing the least harm".  At one point, we realized that there weren't many volunteer escorts into the coat rack area, and no new ones wereexpected to show up.  The ticket numbers on the portable billboard just stopped advancing for an hour or so.  The natives were getting restless--and rightly so.  We were stalled at number 3670, but had given out 4,500 tickets.  By this time, there were only two radio operators left--Dave Leimenstoll and me--and we were sidling up to the coordinators to find out what Plan B was.  There was no Plan B!  The gals in charge came up with one in short order after it became obvious that we were going to make headlines:  "Coats for Kids Runs until 10:00 PM; Hundreds of Kids Go Home Coatless!" 

Thank goodness, that didn't happen!  We opened up the coat rack area for people to shop WITHOUT volunteer escorts, asking that they check out with TSA people at the exit table.  By that time, bless them, people had been waiting for hours...and some were still smiling.

Dave and I stayed until the very end (around 6:00 PM). We met up with Dave's wife for dinner on the way home.  I arrived home about 8:00, making it a 14-hour volunteer day.  Several times, I asked myself why parents with small children would submit themselves to that experience...and then I remembered that MOST of the families we served had more than 3 children.  With gas prices and threats of high heating prices over the winter, families are trying to prepare for the worst.  Buying coats for children, times multiple children, gets really expensive. 

The highlights of my day?  My radio volunteers who are the best!  A family on the premises--mother in a motorized scooter--with her six kids quietly playing Uno on the floor, while the chaos went on around them.  (That was one prepared mommy!)  A 6-year-old African-American girl who asked if she could sit on my lap...and did.  Meeting and talking to TSA officers.  Finding out that one of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees that TSA had sheltered back in September--a young hearing impaired woman who thought there was no future for her because of her disability--is now studying at Gallaudet University because the Salvation Army officer in charge of her care while here steered her in that direction!

I'm glad I was able to help with Coats for Kids again this year.  My biggest reward, however, came from my daughter who told me she was proud of my volunteerism and asked  me how many things I volunteer for.  Meggy, I don't  know!!   It just goes along with amateur radio!

And while I was doing my thing in Indy, my grandchildren were having a fun day at a place called Farmland, seeing animals and pumpkins and taking "twakka" rides on a nice autumn day.  Apparently, little Ryan had an encounter with a chicken that made a move toward a rock that he was carrying.  "Dat CHICKEN bite mine wock!"  What a hoot!