Toys for Tots enters final weeks for collection

Volunteers for the United State Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots program will be out in full force this weekend as Fallon begins to celebrate the holiday season with its Hometown Christmas festivities.

Kellie Kalista, assistant coordinator, said Toys for Tots will have a truck for donations at Walmart beginning at 10 a.m. and setting up after 4 p.m. at the annual Christmas tree lighting on Friday near the Kent’s Building on Main and Center streets. She said volunteers will also collect toys on Saturday at both the Candy Cane hunt at Oats Park and Lights of Christmas. She said a truck will be parked at the Fallon Walmart every Saturday until the toy distribution.

Kalista said another Toys for Tots truck will be parked outside the Fernley Walmart on Saturday and Sunday beginning at 10 a.m.

According to the mission of the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve, the Toys for Tots Program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children in the community in which the campaign is conducted. The local Toys for Tots program has been promoting its toy drive since the summer with booths set up at various events such as the Fallon Cantaloupe Festival.

Kalista said toy boxes have been placed in Fallon and Fernley, and the toys will be distributed at the Oats Park gym during the week of Dec. 18. She said additional information on the distribution times will be forthcoming. Volunteers from the community, Naval Air Station Fallon and the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve hand out hundreds of boxes of toys to residents from Fallon, Fernley, Silver Springs and Gabbs.

In previous years, the local Toys for Tots program has received nearly 3,000 donated new toys and clothes. Older toys, though, have been donated to other charities trying to bring more cheer to children.

The Toys for Tots program was founded by a U.S. Marine Corps reservist in Los Angeles in 1947. Volunteers collected about 5,000 toys during its first campaign before Christmas 1947.

The United States Marine Corps adopted Toys for Tots the following year and expanded it into a nationwide community-action project as the U. S. Marine Corps Reserves Toys for Tots Program. The Walt Disney Company designs the familiar Toys for Tots logo, which can be seen on television public service announcements and on its boxes.

For more information on the local Toys for Tots program, contact Kalista at 775-294-9335 orkelliehorn@outlook.com.