TRAVERSE CITY — Early Saturday morning, the sounds of scissors slicing through festive Santa wrapping paper filled Traverse City Fire Department’s Station 1.
The place was transformed into Santa’s workshop and approximately 40 volunteers stood preparing toys for Santa to give to 120 local children on Christmas morning.
Barbie dolls, bracelet-making kits, Monopoly games and monster truck sets were being wrapped as part of a fire department tradition that’s been in place for more than 50 years.
Keith Fritz, the department’s fire marshal and union representative for this program, said all of the donations come from local toy drives. Some of them take place at area Catholic schools, such as St. Francis, Central Grade School and Immaculate Conception.
Back when the program first started, he said firefighters used to refurbish old toys and give them to children in need. That program evolved into what it is today — gathering new toys and distributing them to families.
Jan Cleland has been participating in this annual tradition since she was a little girl. Her father, Al Cleland, was one of the firefighters who started the program. He died more than a year ago.
“Dad was one those in the early years that fixed the donated used toys,” she said. “As a kid, we got to go watch some of that happen.”
About 15 years ago, Jan Cleland was inspired to revamp the program. When she worked as a third- and fourth-grade teacher at Immaculate Conception, she had the idea to collect donations from her students. When she was a child, she said everyone used to bring toys for the program and exchange them at the State Theater for a ticket to a Western movie.
“It’s the most incredible thing,” she said. “When I looked in the firefighters’ eyes, everybody has the Christmas spirit.”
This year, Fritz said they have Christmas lists for approximately 50 families – and about 500 toys to wrap up. “The majority of the people that are wrapping are the firefighters and their families,” he said.
Families who are in need of some extra help this holiday season gave the department a call earlier this month to see if they could be included.
Fritz said they cross-reference their list with other local agencies and nonprofits that provide similar services to make sure they’re not duplicating effort. Then each participant was able to fill out a sheet of paper with their children’s ages, gender and what they wanted from Santa.
“We do our best to match that up with what we have donated, and then provide that,” Fritz said.
After Saturday’s work on all the wrapping, they’ll reach back out to the families so everything’s ready for next week.
“This is probably the most we’ve had wrapping in quite a while, so it’s really good to see,” he said.