Christmas in July
Every July, the Salvation Army Auxiliary collects donations to buy bikes for needy kids at Christmas.
When was the last time you rode a bicycle? I have three times already this year. When I hopped on those bikes, I immediately was transported back to the 1960s and my carefree childhood. Suddenly, I was a kid again.
During a New Year’s trip to Fort Myers, Florida, I spied a lizard, crane and a tree full of black crows. In April, on a press trip to Alabama, I saw baby crocodiles, an eagles’ nest and more pedaling through Gulf State Park. Here, I recently rented a bike from Al’s Bicycles on MacArthur and rode around Lake Hefner; it felt like a staycation. Meanwhile, my twin sister and I next week will ride a tandem, along cranberry bogs and the Atlantic shoreline, during my annual visit to Cape Cod. It’s no surprise that a bike is the No. 1 wished-for Christmas gift of needy children through the Salvation Army Auxiliary’s annual Angel Tree program.
For more than a decade, I’ve had the privilege to help distribute donated toys the week before Christmas to parents who, without help, wouldn’t be able to afford Christmas for their kids. There’s so much joy in the parents’ faces when they collect the presents. Many cry.
Amid the joy, some parents whose children requested bikes and didn’t get them, beg for them.
Last year, thanks to the generosity of The Oklahoman’s readers and other donors, all 1,350 kids for whom moms had hoped for a bike got one. In previous years, some 650 needy kids didn’t wake Christmas morning to a dreamed-for bike.
Buck$ 4 Bikes
The Buck$ 4 Bikes program, founded in 2006 by the Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary, helps fulfill those dreams.
Every July, the auxiliary distributes more than 100 countertop red kettles to businesses across Oklahoma and Cleveland counties to collect donations for the program. Every penny donated goes to order $34 to $57 bikes from Ohio-based Huffy Bicycles in September. FedEx provides free
delivery in early December; Rotary volunteers assemble the bikes; and the Oklahoma Bicycle Society supplies a helmet for every bike donated.
I hope you’ll drop a buck, or several bucks, in Buck$ 4 Bikes’ buckets when you see them this month. You’ve got until Aug. 5 to make a donation. On Aug. 6, a team of
Salvation Army Auxiliary members will retrieve all the kettles and return them to Area Command, said D’Anna Pulliam, Buck$ 4 Bikes committee chairwoman.
“We remove the locks and the coins and bucks are counted,” Pulliam said. “Some kettles are stuffed full and others are empty.”
If you don’t see a red kettle, you can send a tax-deductible donation to The Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary, 1001 N Pennsylvania, Oklahoma City, OK 73107, Memo: Buck$ 4 Bikes.
When I filed this article, I mailed my donation. Won’t you join me? Christmas will be here before we know it.