Saturday, December 20, 1997

Christmas box project is a shoe-in to warm hearts

By Jim Jones / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

FORT WORTH, Texas, Franklin Graham, the motorcycle-riding son of evangelist Billy Graham, makes a big Christmas impact around the world. Although he doesn't wear a red suit, the younger Graham plays Santa Claus to thousands of children. He's sending 1.5 million shoe boxes filled with toy trucks, stuffed animals, dolls, candy and other items to children in impoverished and war-torn nations.

Although Santa traditionally uses a sleigh and reindeer to spread Christmas cheer, Graham uses giant, Russian-made cargo planes to fly presents to children in more than 40 countries, including Bosnia, Romania, Mexico, Rwanda, Lebanon and Vietnam.

He has helpers far and wide, including many from Texas.

More than 23,000 boxes were collected in Fort Worth-Dallas alone, up from 13,000 last year, said Dana Stone, a member of First United Methodist Church of Bedford, Texas, the local collection point.

She and her husband, Todd, and a fellow church member, Margaret Boling, will travel to Romania to distribute some of the "Operation Christmas Child" boxes.

Billy and Ruth Graham, former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and President Clinton and his family are among those who filled shoe boxes with Christmas presents. Franklin Graham's son, Will (William Franklin Graham IV), picked up President Reagan's gift box.

"My mother and father didn't stop with one box; they filled about 10 of them," Franklin Graham said in a phone interview from California this week. "My mother collects things all year long."

As he prepared to accompany the first planeload of gifts to Mexico, Franklin Graham explained: "We go to the poorest of the poor. We go to areas of the world where this is the first, and only, gift some of these children will receive."

People in the United Kingdom began the project six years ago, sending shoe boxes filled with Christmas gifts to Bosnia. In 1993, they asked Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse, based in Boone, N.C., to get involved.

"It has mushroomed since then," said Melissa Morgan, a spokeswoman for Graham's office in Boone. Last year about 1 million boxes were delivered.

"Children are children the world over, and they need help," Graham said. The gifts come from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Finland, Germany, Holland and Australia. Many shoe boxes are packed by children, Graham said.

"We celebrate the birth of a child, God's son, at Christmas," said Graham, 45. "What better way to celebrate Christmas than to have children giving to children."

States contributing the most shoe boxes were Florida, 65,000; Ohio, 43,000; Texas, 35,000; and New York, 34,000.

The simplicity of the program is part of its success, said the Rev. Ross Robinson, associate minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, the regional collection center for North Texas.

"All you have to do is fill up a shoe box with toy trucks or cars, hair ribbons and brushes, dolls -- anything that will fit in a shoe box," he said. A $5 donation for shipping is requested, but not mandatory.

Robinson, who was to travel to Mexico with Graham this week, handed out Christmas shoe boxes in Croatia and Bosnia last year. He's never had a greater thrill, he said.

"To see the sheer joy this puts on the faces of kids was unforgettable," he said. "I came away with tears in my eyes more than once."

(Jim Jones is religion editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Write to him at: the Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101.)

(c) 1997, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

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