Local News

Tiny Georgetown collected the most Toys for Tots in Essex County, again. Here’s how they do it.

The Fire Department exceeded its goal of collecting 4,000 donated toys, which for a town of 3,200 households, is more than one toy for every residence.

Georgetown Fire Department's Toys for Tots campaign brought in the most toys for Essex County. Courtesy of Mike Jarvis, Jarvi Productions

By Katelyn Umholtz

December 22, 2023

3 minutes to read

For more than two decades, the Georgetown Fire Department has spent one 12-hour day each December traversing 65 miles of roads in a caravan of trucks and trailers for one reason: to collect toy donations ahead of the holidays.

Firefighters, their family and friends, nearly 70 volunteers, some police, and Marines started their day on Dec. 3 — a typical rainy weekend day in Massachusetts that followed a sunny work week — at 8:45 a.m.

The next several hours were spent driving Santa and Mrs. Claus around, stopping by homes in Georgetown to accept toy donations of any kind. The line of cars, some even decorated, resembles a small parade, except the attendees are giving items to the procession instead of the other way around.

“It was downpouring,” said Brian Coolidge, the fire department’s public information officer who helps plan the annual event. “… But we kept going, so we had a lot of wet folks in our group. But everybody was smiling at the end of the day.”

The dreary weather was similar to that of their first year of adding Toys for Tots — a charity started by Marines that donates new toys to less fortunate children during the holidays — to the Santa Tour they had been doing since the ’90s. That parade, in 2000, was still a success, Coolidge said, because the department was able to collect 400 toys.

Since that first year of doing it, the event has remained a rain-or-shine day, but the number of toys collected has grown tenfold.

“The last five years … we usually run about 3,400 (to) 3,600,” Coolidge said. “This year we broke the 4,000 mark.”

That’s 4,191 toys to be exact. Georgetown is made up of about 8,400 residents living in 3,200 households, so that’s more than one toy for every household.

Their Toys for Tots fundraising event has stood out, even to the Marine Corps, who oversees the national Toys For Tots charity event and consistently ranks this small Massachusetts town a top giver in Essex County.

Courtesy of Mike Jarvis/Jarvi Productions

According to the Toys for Tots coordinator for both Essex and Middlesex counties, more than 120,000 toys were distributed last year. Nationally, the organization collected more than 24 million toys, according to their audit report.

In Georgetown, dozens and dozens of people are willing to give up a weekend day — over 12 hours of that weekend day — to help take in donations to kids in need. Coolidge said they break for lunch and dinner, but that’s it. And though they used to swap out Santas in the past, the one you see each year now is the same Santa from day to night.

Coolidge said they also would likely not see the kinds of donation numbers they get each year if they instead just accepted donations at drop-off stations, like many participating towns or companies that organize Toys for Tots programs.

But its success is also largely owed to the community’s excitement for it. In some neighborhoods, Coolidge said the majority of households participate. Residents are able to track Santa’s parade of trucks by using an app. When the trucks and trailers taking toys get to their block — sirens blaring — there are residents standing outside, sometimes with arms full of board games, Play-Doh, and basketballs, to name just a few.

There is one house in town that throws a holiday party each year with one admission rule: Guests must bring a bike in order to join the festivities, and those bikes are then donated to Toys for Tots. This year, the volunteers loaded 50 bikes into a trailer and the back of the pickup truck pulling it.

“Some of this stuff isn’t really cheap either,” Coolidge said. “We get some really, really good stuff. People aren’t just handing us one thing — they’re handing us bags of stuff.”

And to keep the buzz going each year, the fire department tries to do something different. This was the first year Mrs. Claus was able to participate, thanks to a sponsor who built a two-seater sleigh for the jolliest couple in town to ride around Georgetown.

As for the future of the event, Coolidge said they already have some ideas to possibly do a float, to make it an even bigger parade spectacle.

“With the economy kind of teetering, and the high inflation, a lot of people worry about paying their bills,” Coolidge said. “This allows us to collect a lot of toys and get those to those in need.”