Santa will be arriving a few days early in Louisville this year for the holidays—on a fire truck. He and Mrs. Claus will be stopping by the American Red Cross Louisville Area Chapter building to greet children and pass out presents for the 29th Annual Holiday Party.
The party is held every year for Kentuckiana children whose homes
have been lost or severely
damaged to fires. The auditorium is decorated with snowflakes and
garland and turned into a winter wonderland. The room where we host health and safety training
is turned into a welcome area, where kids and their families can enjoy pizza,
games, and crafts: the only reindeer might be ones the kids make out of candy
canes, but the magic is no less real when the kids head upstairs to meet with
Santa and Mrs. Claus and receive their presents.
The people who work behind the scenes work their own kind of magic
to make sure that everything runs smoothly during the festivities. The fire
engine Santa and Mrs. Claus arrive on is provided by the Louisville
Professional Firefighters Union Local 345, which sponsors the party every year and purchases the toys for the
children. The party itself would not come together every year without
the work of Kim Jackson, who works in disaster services, and her team of 30
volunteers.
Kim and her team are the ones who decorate the auditorium and
organize the presents the kids will receive at the party. They spend a morning
with area firefighters
before the party, shopping for gifts for nearly 150 children, and then spend the afternoon
sorting through all of them so that each child will have a bag of toys when
Santa arrives. Once the party is in full swing, the volunteers are busy helping
the children with crafts, painting faces, guiding them upstairs, and helping
families take their gifts back to their cars when the party ends.
