Christmas for Kids reaches $1 million milestone

JR Guest Columnist Sandy Sandlin is shown with some of the records he’s kept since 1985 for Christmas for Kids. We appreciate him sharing some of the history of the charity and other memories with us. And we greatly appreciate all his efforts on behalf of the children in need in this area for so many decades.

Three days before Christmas in 2024, we reached a very important goal for Christmas for Kids in Hamilton, with a million dollars being raised during the last 40 years. This milestone speaks to the type of community we have--that we are able to raise funds like this to help out those needing some assistance around the holidays.
This is something, that to me, makes our city a little different from other cities. A lot of cities may do this, but I’d be surprised if another city of our size does the volume we do.
Rebekah Wiginton, a pharmacist who works with us at Fred’s Pharmacy, made the donation that put us over the top to make our million dollar mark. We also received a $10,000 donation on Jan. 7, 2025, from The Ramp University, which helped us meet our 2024 goal of $45,000.
We had 457 kids on our list this year and, thanks to our generous donors, were able to spend $100 on each one to buy presents for them--mostly clothes--to be wrapped as gifts and presented by their parents or caretakers on Christmas morning.
I was a little concerned about the money amount coming in this year before Christmas, and I’m very grateful we were able to reach both our goal this year and the million dollar milestone.
I’d like to give a big congratulations to the community! This is a celebration! I’d like to thank all of our donors throughout the last 40-plus years. We have a lot of the same people who give every year and who have done so for 20 years or more. I don’t know of any big gift we did not receive this year.
Churches, businesses, clubs and individuals all donated as they usually do. We had one anonymous donation for $1,000. A couple of our commissioners made large donations. CIS Love for Others gave us $2,000. As I mentioned, The Ramp made their usual large donation. And even though they did not have a Christmas play this year to help raise their funds, they took up a big collection for these kids and helped us tremendously.
And again, our churches contributed greatly. Bigger churches had Sunday School classes who contributed, and many smaller churches sent $750, $1,000 or $1,500. We have a fellow from Guin who gives $1,000 anonymously every year. We’ve had a local physician present us with a big check. We even had some $10, $15 and $25 anonymous contributions, and you knew that was all they could give--but they gave.
I want to note our very first donation this year--presented months ago--was from a former recipient. She wanted to be anonymous and said Christmas for Kids made a very big impression on her back when she was in school, and she wanted to give back. She had a handful of $100 bills and began counting them out. When she got to 10, I thought, “We’re going to get a thousand, that’s pretty nice.” Then she counted out 10 more and 10 more after that for a $3,000 total. For her to thank us, and to come by and make a special donation, meant the world to me.
I’ve also received a few notes in the mail with checks, along with some Christmas cards, from donors in the past. We even had an inmate who sent money four years in a row. One year, he said he put a percentage back of his income every pay period and had received a 10 cent per hour raise to put him at 50 cents an hour. He sent a $150.50 donation or funds equal to more than 300 hours of work. We had one guy send $25 “to help the children of Christmas,” with a note adding “God bless you. Roll Tide! SEC Champs!” We’ve had a foster parent say, “Thank you for your kindness in doing this. You helped us make our foster kid’s Christmas brighter.”
I also have a former classmate, who lives in Atlanta, who sends money. There are people who get the paper out of town, and who lived here before, and see it, and we hope they’ll give.

Sharing some history
Now we’ve reached this milestone, I’d like to share a little of our history for those who don’t know it. I’m not exactly sure when we started, but I have records going back to 1985, so it was

probably 1979 or so. I was in the Jaycee’s, which disbanded in the late 90s, and Jimmy Clement was a member and working at the Office of Economic Opportunity.
He said he had some kids who wouldn’t have anything for Christmas, so the club members all brought things from home--toys and whatever--and we took the kids’ names and ages and sex, and we went through the different bags and got items for them. We did that for about two or three years.
Then, in July of 1981, we adopted a six-month old baby girl who’d been in foster care for the first six months of her life. After that, I had a special place in my heart for kids. So, I told the club we needed to buy new stuff for the children, and we needed to spend at least $50--and I’d be the chair of the committee. They were all for that.
To start with, I’d make a list of all the businesses in town and take them to the meetings and say if you have a connection to a person there, put your name beside them on the list and go and ask them for money. We did that a few years and then the communities saw what was happening, and we had to ask for less and less. Finally, a few years ago, we didn’t have to ask anybody. They’d announce it in the paper (Journal-Record) and on the radio (WERH) and on Pete’s station (WMTY) and that was it.
We used to cover the whole county, but eventually there were organizations in most of the cities and towns who helped take care of the kids there. Our largest number of kids was in 2010 when we had 641, and we were still county-wide. We had $52,130 in donations then from 201 donors.
In 2023, we had 426 kids. Most years, it’s been around 300 or 400 children. In 2017, we raised $36,000 for 458 kids, but we were probably spending $90 each at that time. In 2009, we took in $29,344 in 234 donations to help 591 kids. In contrast, this year we only had 117 donors. That’s less than half of what we were getting a few years ago. So, we’re really needing more $50 to $100 donations from more people to help keep this going. Next year, we might try using social media. And again, we are so grateful for our big donations from our regular contributors who continue to give faithfully.
And we also definitely couldn’t have done this so many years successfully without the local paper, which puts us on the front page every week to help promote the cause. We got the idea from the Birmingham Post-Herald and an organization in Birmingham that had a charity for kids where they’d take names and raise money and put the donors on the front page every day. Those kids got to go to a big warehouse and pick out some fruit, a little gift and a big gift. I think they were spending $10 on each kid. We were already spending $50. I thank P.J. (general manager of JR) for taking the time to take the names every single week and run them on the front page. I guess we’d have to hire a plane and fly a banner otherwise. And again, we plan to try social media next year to see if we can spread the word to get more donations. We have plenty of kids to help.
We’ve also had businesses provide a lot of help through the years. Bill’s Dollar Store used to take the applications and pick out the gifts and even wrap them. When Mary Nell Lunsford owned her flower shop and children’s store, she’d do all the work of filling the list, wrapping the gifts and putting them in bags. Later on, after she closed, I didn’t know where to turn. Then I thought of the school. Linda Real, a P.E. teacher at the middle school who was over the Beta Club, began to coordinate the gift buying with her students. Hazel Rogers took over from her in about 1996. A couple of years before Hazel retired, she reached out to Kacy Cobb at the high school and got her involved.
Hazel told someone some of her students would often buy presents for the parents, too. Or even put in some of their own money for the kids because Christmas for Kids touched their hearts so. When some of these middle schoolers got to high school, they still wanted to help. We still have kids who’ve graduated tell me they want to help, and I send them to Kacy.
I thank Kacy and all those who’ve helped behind the scenes for so many years. Kacy coordinates the high school students, which is a big, big job. There are 400-plus individuals being

shopped for. Also, I thank The Ramp University students who did all the buying for the 55 children in foster care who were on the list. And thank you to Family Restoration Services who provided us with the children in foster care information. A big thanks to Greg Brumley, who started out decades ago as our treasurer, and who still is. We give him the money, and he pays the bills.
A few other things from our history and my notes--we also used to get big bags of coins from elementary school children who wanted to help others. One year, when Wanda Gilliland was at the high school, they sent $3,300. In 2009, schools contributed $4,300, churches sent in $6,400 and clubs shared $6,500. They used to give a pizza party to the high school class that raised the most funds. I believe they’ve been sending in $1,000 for a few years. I’m not sure about the pizza party now.
Also, for some time, we’ve been getting “in memory of” and “in honor of” contributions and those are growing every year. I don’t know when we started it, but somebody probably asked me to do it. I’m not that smart to have thought of that myself. But when one person sees that, they decide later they also want to do it. We had a bunch of those this year.

‘That’s our community!’
Looking back, now that Christmas for Kids has been going on so long, it’s easy. We put the announcements and the names in the paper and $40,000 comes in the door--and sometimes more. And that’s just the people in our community. That’s how they are. That’s our community! We don’t have to go door to door and ask. So far, Christmas for Kids is its own entity. We don’t have to have a big fundraiser. It’s a community effort. Someday, I won’t be here, and I hope somebody picks this up and continues it. It’s too good a charity to let it wither away.
People are used to giving at Fred’s Pharmacy and most of our donations are brought in the door here. But some are mailed to P.O. Box 1630, Hamilton, AL, 35570, with “Christmas for Kids” on the envelope. They don’t even mention the pharmacy.
I think with the paper’s continuing help and by adding social media next year, we might be able to up our donations and our total contributors. The best thing to do if you need help is get your application in early. This Nov. 1, we’ll start taking the names of children again. If your child lives in Hamilton or goes to school here, you can come in, fill out a form and give it to me.
And we’ll start taking donations again, too, around the holidays. Although you can always make those. Thanks once more--or actually thanks a million times--to the Hamilton community and everyone else who helped us get through last year and to a million dollars total given to Christmas for Kids. God bless you all.


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