Getting Serious About Fun And Games For Christmas

By Shannon Hicks

“Oh my god, I remember these!” cried Haley Trudell, looking over some of the toys and games that were piled on her grandmother’s dining room table last weekend. Just a young girl herself, Haley’s memories of playing with similar toys on the table and neatly stacked on the floor next to the table came rushing back as she and older sister Julia looked through the donations from residents of Walnut Tree Village Phase II. Some of the toys were the same the girls had played with in their younger days, and most others they at least knew of.

The girls’ grandmother, Rosemary Trudell, decided a few weeks ago to help children in the area. She sent a note out to all of the residents of the Sandy Hook active lifestyle community, asking them to consider making a donation in time for this year’s Depot Day on December 13.

“Christmas will soon be here and some children will be disappointed,” Mrs Trudell wrote in her note. “I am hoping that the residents of Walnut Tree Village II can help.”

Depot Day is the culmination of the annual clothing, food, and toy drive run by The Newtown Fund. The charitable organization sponsors Christmas baskets every year for people in need in Newtown and Sandy Hook.

Families who need a hand are chosen by the town’s Social Services director and are assigned numbers in order to keep their identities confidential. The families are then “adopted” by organizations and individuals, who fill each family’s wish list.

There is always an additional need for toys, Mrs Trudell learned.

Mrs Trudell had asked that friends and neighbors either drop their donations off at the home where she and husband George live, or to let her know that they would have a donation ready on the morning of December 6 and she and her granddaughters would pick them up.

The response was overwhelming.

“I just wanted to do something to help children who might not have a happy Christmas this year, so I decided to collect toys,” said Mrs Trudell. “The response from the group here has been amazing. People have been so generous, and they’re having fun. I can’t tell you how many people have said ‘Thank you. I haven’t bought a toy in a few years, and this was so much fun.’”

The decision to give the collected toys to The Newtown Fund came after Mrs Trudell learned that the police and most fire departments would be doing their own collections for various organizations.

“I called the police department, fire departments, to see if I could help them, but they had their own collections already set up,” she said. “It was Cathy Sullivan who suggested The Newtown Fund.”

Mrs Sullivan, who lives with her husband Don diagonally across the street from the Trudells, was able to help her friend find some direction for her good efforts.

“I knew all about The Newtown Fund,” Mrs Sullivan said with a laugh. “I used to be the president of it.

“I gave her the info about the fund’s Christmas basket program so that the people she was giving the letter to would know that it’s organized, that they know there’s accountability,” she added.

Mrs Trudell tried to make the effort as easy as possible for her neighbors.

“There’s no age limit. I told everyone to buy a toy, any toy, for any age,” she said. “I also said that coloring books and crayons were fine. They didn’t have to go overboard with spending. I didn’t want anyone to feel like there was a money limit.”

Mrs Trudell and her granddaughters had planned to spend a few hours walking and driving to the condos in Walnut Tree Village II last Saturday morning, but even there her neighbors stepped up. By 10 am, when the trio had planned to head out, many of the toys for the collection had instead been dropped off at the Trudell home.

“We only have six or seven homes to visit now,” said Mrs Trudell as she, Haley, and Julia bundled up to head outdoors to collect the toys that were still waiting for them.

The donations have continued, too. The Trudells have returned home a number of times this week to find neighbors waiting for them, or bags left for them filled with more toys and gifts. One neighbor reportedly went shopping for a donation and returned home with a large collection of hats, scarves, and mittens, and filled many of the mittens with small containers of M&M candies.

“The neighbors have gotten such joy out of this. People bought more, even after dropping off their first donation, and came back with more for the collection,” said George Trudell. “They enjoyed this so much.”

Before his wife and granddaughters left on their Saturday morning rounds, George looked over at his wife and said, “This was a great idea, honey. You deserve a lot of credit.”