The Sentinel-Record - HER - Hot Springs
HER Family
The Salvation Army works to ensure every child magical Christmas
T he holiday season usually provides families with a healthy dose of sugar and spice — those sweet moments spent catching up with loved ones, spiced with the added stress that can come with budgeting for that shopping list and preparing the house for guests.
Amid all the festivities and the blur of everything red, green and shimmery, people often forget that many families in the community experience hardships throughout the holiday season despite doing their best to provide for their families.
The Salvation Army works year-round to ensure that no one in the community has to live in fear about finding their next meal, keeping the lights on for their children to do homework, or what will happen to them when disaster strikes. During the holiday season, it goes into overdrive and kicks off its Angel Tree program and Red Kettle Drive.
The Angel Tree program is one of the most notable Christmas gift drives for children in the country. The first Angel Tree graced the floors of a shopping mall in Lynchburg, Va., in 1979, and each year since the program has grown more and more.
Today, millions of children nationwide have become beneficiaries of the program. Last year, Garland County alone provided Christmas gifts for 450 children in need. This year, it challenged the community to touch the lives of 474 children locally.
“I really like that at end of the day, the Angel Tree provides hope to families and children that would otherwise have nothing on Christmas Day,” The Salvation Army Captain Bradley Hargis said.
“Eventually the toys are going to break, they will get lost, they won’t be trendy anymore but the fact is, the Angel Tree program really gets us back to the roots of Christmas.”
Bradley Hargis and his wife, Stephanie, are both Captains with The Salvation Army. The couple moved their young family to Hot Springs last year and immediately began work with the local chapter. The Angel Tree program is especially close to Stephanie’s heart, as it had a direct impact on her childhood.
The families allowed to participate in the program meet the strict parameters of the federal poverty guidelines. Despite most guardians who sign their children up working two or even three jobs, Hargis said that without the gifts from the Angel Tree, there would be nothing to open on Christmas morning.
“We know that the families we are servicing with the Angel Tree find it hard enough to put food on the table, let alone a Christmas present under the tree.
“Most of them work; we have very few who don’t. We do have some that are on disability, a lot of older grandparents raising grandchildren, but most are working. Most are working multiple jobs but a lot of times it is seasonal and minimum wage jobs. It’s just the nature of the beast,” Hargis said.
Several trees decorated with Angel cards detailing the Christmas wish and basic needs of children in the community are scattered throughout
the county each year. Good Samaritans in the community will adopt an Angel and purchase the items listed. Hargis said it is not uncommon for people to go above and beyond what the child asked for, and this year he has seen several groups adopt entire families.
While he is usually not surprised with how generous people become when shopping for their Angel, he sometimes finds himself taken aback when reading what each child asked to receive on Christmas morning.
“We had some where kids were saying, ‘I’d really like a bed this year,’ an older kid who asked for a certain brand of clothing because they were being bullied at school, and sometimes we see older siblings asking that their little brother or sister gets the gift they asked for. Some of those are the ones we don’t expect and can be a little bit heartbreaking,” he said.
Hargis said he believes one of the most rewarding parts of the program is that the children will probably never know they were one of the Angels on the tree. Every gift purchased is delivered unwrapped so parents can wrap it personally. When Christmas morning comes around and there are presents wrapped under the tree, it’s like magic, Hargis said.
“We don’t really want the children to know that The Salvation Army had a hand in getting these gifts. We want the kids thinking that their guardian beat all the odds and managed to provide them with gifts that year or, for the younger one, that even though mom and dad might be having a hard time, Santa still came through,” he said.
In addition to the Angel Tree program, The Salvation Army also puts on the Red Kettle Drive. The iconic donation boxes and bell ringers collect up to one-tenth of The Salvation Army’s annual budget. This covers the cost of their nightly feeding program, picks up the slack if the food pantry runs dry, allows them to offer social service assistance, and will help fund their new anti-poverty program beginning next year.
Although the deadline for gifts to be returned has passed and gifts are set to be dispersed on Dec. 15, the Red Kettle Drive is still going strong. This year, they have set a goal for $115,000.
To learn more about The Salvation Army and how you can make a difference in the community, contact them at 501-623-1628.