Geraldine Lindsey couldn’t hide her smile as she followed a Salvation Army volunteer loading bags of toys for her two daughters into her SUV outside a former West Telemarketing building just off Dauphin Street near Interstate 65. “I thank God for this,” she said. “On Christmas morning, they’re going to be so excited. I just want to see them smile.”
Lindsey was one of roughly 900 people who came through The Salvation Army’s Angel Tree distribution in Mobile, picking up bags of toys along with bicycles and basketball goals for children whose families had registered for help back in September. Inside the vacant building, staff and volunteers had built a system designed to move families through efficiently, with a line forming outside in 15-minute intervals.
When families registered months earlier, they were asked to list a “need” and a “want” for each child, according to Maj. Mark Brown, area commander for The Salvation Army of Coastal Alabama. Those requests, ranging from shoes and a basketball to a blanket and a train set, were written on paper angels and hung on Angel Trees around the region, including one at Bel Air Mall, others at area Walmart Vision Centers, and one at the Tanger Outlet Center in Foley. The Salvation Army had already distributed toys earlier in the week in Foley and Bayou La Batre before Wednesday’s Mobile distribution.
About 40 volunteers worked from 9 a.m. to roughly 5 p.m. matching code numbers to cardboard boxes, each representing a family that had signed up for help. Some families had just one bag for a single child; one box held nine bags for a larger household, Brown said. Every bag, packaged in large clear plastic, contained the child’s stated need and want along with a few extra items either purchased directly by the donor who “adopted” that child’s angel or added through a separate community toy drive. Families were expected to take the bags home to wrap for Christmas morning.
Longtime volunteer Sophia Newby, who has helped with the Angel Tree program for 16 years, said the effort depends on teamwork. “This is my way of giving back,” she said. “It’s a team thing. It always goes smoothly when you have a team. We want to make each child as happy as can be.” Brown echoed that sentiment, crediting the volunteers directly for making the large-scale distribution possible. “We could not manage it without these absolutely wonderful volunteers,” he said.
Brown said he has been moved over the years by families who make adopting an Angel Tree child a yearly tradition, sometimes choosing children the same age as their own kids, and occasionally choosing an angel quietly in memory of a child they lost. “It’s almost as meaningful, or even more meaningful, for the people who give than for those who receive,” he said.
The parking lot outside the distribution center stayed busy throughout the day, with Salvation Army staff and U.S. Coast Guard volunteers helping carry bags of gifts to family vehicles. Among those in line was Ashley Bendolph, who brought her six-week-old baby along with her mother to pick up gifts for her three older children, one more example of the program’s reach across Mobile-area households this holiday season.