Volunteer ‘hooked’ on paying it forward
Seeing and hearing children’s joy tugs at Jay Lennox’s heartstrings
It’s the screams that stay with Jay Lennox.
He’ll hand over a Santa Claus Fund gift box. A parent will express gratitude. They’ll shut the door. He’ll begin walking down the apartment hallway. And then he’ll hear the shriek of an elated little kid. He can relate. Lennox had a long career at IBM, and he now lives a comfortable retirement life in Richmond Hill. But he knows firsthand how much an unexpected holiday gift can mean to a child who doesn’t have much.
“Having been in that situation,” he said, “I know it may be the only thing they’ll get for Christmas.”
Lennox, 68, grew up middleclass in Agincourt. Then his dad died of lymphoma. The next year, 1965, his mom began receiving welfare for more than a year, still in a nice bungalow but struggling to feed four children.
Just before Christmas that year, someone came to the door with a gift box for each of his two little sisters. A few days lat- er, someone came back with hockey sticks for him and his brother.
He still doesn’t know where the sticks came from. In the mid-1990s, reading the Star during the holiday season, he realized the boxes might well have come from the Santa Claus Fund.
The Star has delivered gift boxes to underprivileged local children every Christmas since 1906. This year, we’re trying to raise $1.7 million to give presents to 45,000 kids. Every penny of every donation is spent on the boxes. You can donate here.
Ten years ago, Lennox decided to start volunteering as a Santa’s helper himself. His travels have taken him from decrepit apartments to a hotel housing refugees to spacious homes — where he remembers being greeted by grandparents trying to make ends meet looking after young children.
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” he said, and he knows that from experience, too.
Over the years, he has been joined by his daughter Sarah and his wife Anne. This year, he found some new recruits. His son Mark, daughter-in-law Cassandre and granddaughters Hailey, 7, and Violet, 4, also went out to deliver.
He said he’ll do it until he physically can’t do it any more. Once you see those children — and, especially, hear them — “you get touched and you get hooked,” he said, and it is hard to stop.