Published: Nov 25, 2007
Tampa Tribune, Pasco

ZEPHYRHILLS - There are ways, besides the relieved looks on turkeys' faces, to know that Thanksgiving has come and gone. Among them would be checking the vital signs of a certain east Pasco community activist.

You can set your calendar by it: If Bob Loring's blood pressure is up, his heart racing and his pupils dilated, then we're all down to the last spoonful of leftover dressing and a few shavings of dark meat. Thanksgiving is over and the first Saturday of December - known in Loring's circles as Make-or-Break Saturday - approaches at a gallop.

And this year, Loring's concerns are larger and more numerous than usual. That's OK, generally: a worried Loring is a happy Loring. Fretting is what keeps him sharp nearly nine years into a game that grinds more fresh meat than Oscar Mayer.

Never mind that he sits atop a toy sack rising higher than any Disney World mountain, or that he directs an army of eager volunteers who regard their participation as a reward for living modest, circumspect and wholesome lives. Never mind that the system of collection, organization and distribution of donations is established, proven, reliable and replicable.

Being director of the East Pasco Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots campaign means never having to say you're at ease. I mean, if it's not the soaring price of fuel, or surveys suggesting the number of folks who will spend less this Christmas season is sharply up, it's recalled lethal Chinese toys somehow finding their way into Toys for Tots collections and into the mouths of unsuspecting recipients.

"Of course, I'm worried," Loring says. "Real worried. Who wouldn't be?"

Oh, Bob. Look around.

Representing the sublimely unruffled arm of the Toys for Tots battalion: Letter carriers Yvette Garcia-Munett, David Bridges and Ben Gordon, local letter carriers union chief Kathy Sullivan and Zephyrhills Postmaster Doug Fiedler, all veterans of Make-or-Break Saturday. Each looks forward to the annual first Saturday in December toy roundup as the front door to their holiday season, a launching pad that makes any yuletide dream seem not only possible, but likely.

About this time every year, says Gordon, 41, a so-called rural carrier whose route includes parts of Wesley Chapel, residents of a mobile home park for retirees begin to ask, "When?" He never responds, "When what?" He knows. "It gets your Christmas spirit going," Gordon says.

Loring calls it the "grandparent effect," older folks separated from their grandchildren by the distance of a plane ride or two, investing in some holiday cheer for nearby youngsters. "We count on that," Loring says.

They know the drill, and how. Place a new toy (or perhaps a bundle of toys - remember the batteries!) by the mailbox before the letter carrier's Saturday arrival. Loring's organization, beginning with postal service employees and including Boy and Girl Scouts, firefighters and inactive (never ex-, never former) Marines, will do the rest.

Similar pickups will unfold in west Pasco County, where organizers are expanding from one to two distribution centers, at Mitchell High School and Hudson Middle School. In fact, eight counties - from Sarasota to Citrus - comprising Suncoast Letter Carriers will participate in the first Saturday pickup.

Again, toys go to kids in the area where they were collected. In east Pasco, with five distribution centers from Trilby to Land O' Lakes, that day's success is critical, traditionally accounting for 75 percent of the toys distributed.

No pressure intended here, but Bridges, 42, reports his east Zephyrhills route "puts out a record number of toys every year."

Hear that, Dade City? Tuned in, New Port Richey? Feel like you're being called out, Land O' Lakes, Wesley Chapel, Baillies Bluff?

Remember, the letter carrier you make happy may be your own. Sullivan isn't yet past the delight she felt the year she turned the corner and came upon mailbox supporting a large bag with the head of a gigantic stuffed teddy bear peering out.

"This is going to be the best day I have all year!" she shrieked to no one in particular.

Bridges says his collections last year included a pair of bicycles standing by one client's mailbox, adding, "I'm counting on them again this year, too."

"I feel proud, honored, to participate," says Garcia-Munett, 30, anticipating her second toy collection Saturday. "It's just an incredible feeling."

Who better, after all, to represent the front line of this annual outreach to underprivileged children? Year after year, Sullivan notes, national surveys list letter carriers among the top three categories of workers regarded by the public as trustworthy and reliable. Adds Sullivan, 50, "People know we are going to get those toys to people who need them."

And the kids who get them - kids who live in the vicinity of where the toys are collected - won't forget. Fiedler, a 1976 Plant High graduate who played in the same infield as future Hall-of-Famer Wade Boggs, recalls attending a reception for Boys & Girls Club graduates who were headed to college when he was buttonholed by one of the honorees.

The lad and his sister moved in with their grandmother when their parents' marriage dissolved several years earlier, and became recipients of Toys for Tots largess one Christmas.

"He said he still remembered the toys they received," Fiedler says, "and how grateful they were to know that people cared about them. He said, "You will never know how much that meant."

Such reunions are as rare as they are instructive. Multiply Fiedler's experience several thousand times, and that is the opportunity the combination of season and circumstance annually lays at our feet.

"It's old-fashioned community building," Loring says. "I don't know how people can't get excited about that."

"It makes me feel like Santa," Bridges says. "Ho, ho, ho!"

So. It's Make-or-Break Saturday minus 6 days, and East Pasco's ageless, red-headed elf is sweating icicles.

Have you done your shopping yet?

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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