Santa Claus had a little help this year, thanks to the Ellsworth County Christmas Store and the many businesses, partners, donors and volunteers who have allowed it to continue to help Ellsworth County families for years.
“This is our 25th year to help families in Ellsworth County have a better Christmas,” said Tami McGreevy, the director and vision behind the Christmas Store concept. “We are helping 80 families and 212 children currently. We’ll get more because sometimes people don’t think about Christmas until the week of Christmas. We don’t really turn anyone away, as long as they are in Ellsworth County or their kids go to Ellsworth schools.”
The Ellsworth County Christmas Store began with one person seeing a simple need in the community.
“I was the secretary at a church office and I still had presents on Dec. 24 and I didn’t know where to go with them in the year 2000,” McGreevy said. “Throughout 2001, it really haunted me, because I was like, someone out there needs them, and I don’t know who that someone is, so with some help from some friends, we developed this program, and it has morphed over the years as things change. But we started with allowing families to spend so much money at Alco, when Tractor Supply was Alco. We did that until the year 2010. From then on, we’ve had to adapt the program, but didn’t stop. We didn’t even stop during COVID; we just adapted our whole program.”
The advice and support of a friend that had a similar program in a larger city inspired her to think big.
“With the help of friends and family, and a really good friend in Denver, who told me, ‘We do this kind of thing I think you could do it, I think you could do it at Alco,’ we began,” she said. “That’s how it started. Because there was a need, and I didn’t know how to take care of it. We get cash donations. It’s now over a $15,000 program. Some people just donate, they don’t ask for the cash to go shopping. We have shoppers, though, who go shopping, and we give them $65 per kid, and they go shopping, and they might spend $65.01 or $80, it doesn’t matter. It is just what we have budgeted.”
This year, the Christmas Store was open at the Ellsworth American Legion on Dec. 13 and 14. A room inside was filled with toys for siblings to shop from, wrapped packages were ready for pickup and lines of refurbished bicycles took center space in the American Legion parking lot.
On Dec. 13, McGreevy was at the store preparing for kids and families to arrive.
“This is the Ellsworth County Christmas Store. Families will come and pick up all the gifts that we have purchased for them that they have wished for,” she said. “Up to $65 per kid, that was our budget this year. The bicycles outside are all refurbished bikes from the prison. ECF is a great supporter and has always been a supporter of our mission, and then the Kiwanis Club is kind enough to distribute the bikes for us, and they have been a partner with us from the beginning as well. We shop for the kids, and then today and tomorrow are our pickup days for the registered families.”
Sgt. Phillip DeCouteau, detail supervisor at the bike shop at Ellsworth Correctional Facility, and Jim Kirkbride, President of the Ellsworth chapter of Kiwanis International and CEO at Ellsworth County Medical Center, which also participates in the Christmas Store, were on hand Dec. 13 to assist with the bicycle distribution.
“It’s amazing the work they do for kids by redoing the bikes,” Kirkbride said.
DeCouteau said the residents have been working for months to prepare bicycles for Christmas.
“They’ve been working since about August or September or so. People pick up our bikes around the state. We just picked up 30-some bikes to go to Pratt yesterday. We send them to local towns around here,” DeCouteau said. “We’re starting to bring the program back up. After Covid it went down a while. Before that, we were doing about 2,000 bikes a year. Right now, we’re doing 600 to 700 bikes per year. Someone is going down to Holyrood right now. He’s going to be Santa, passing out some bikes we did here.”
The bike shop at ECF puts a lot of work in on the bikes.
“The residents fix up the bikes. A lot of these are painted. We paint them and just rebuild them from the bottom up,” he said. “The bike shop started refurbishing bikes in 1999, with just a couple of guys in the maintenance shop fixing bikes, and it just kind of grew from there. I’ve got about 15 guys with the guys painting bikes, the guys rebuilding bikes and whatnot.
“We also sell art from bike parts to help support the bike program, so we have a few more guys in there. All together with the guys that make art and the guys that rebuild, we have maybe 18 guys — painting, rebuilding — lots of skills for the guys to take when they get out, and hopefully help themselves out too. They can help themselves and help people in the community and state of Kansas, so it’s a really good program.”
Kirkbride said the Kiwanis Club also has been involved for years.
“Kiwanis is an international youth program. I don’t know how long we’ve been involved, my guess is pretty much since the beginning of it,” he said. “Our role is to have members come and work and handle the service side. We help from time to time with our membership to gather bikes and get them out to prison. We don’t do any of the assembly; we’re more on the donation and the service side.
“This is the fourth year I’ve participated in it myself. I’m the CEO at the hospital as well, and we used to do it in the warehouse inside, but we’re having construction there now, but next year we’ll move it back indoors. This is the first year I think they’ve done it at the Legion.”
“But this is kind of nice for families having both the store and the bikes here,” DeCouteau said.
Kirkbride admired the work on the bikes lined up waiting for their new riders.
“You look at some of them, they are like brand new bikes. It’s a great value,” Kirbride said. “We have some kids who, like last year, brought in their older bike and took home a bigger bike. I know there are some kids that come through each year and upgrade as they grow. You get a lot of grandparents that come through and get a bike for a grandkid, too.”
DeCouteau also brought a lot of safety helmets for the kids.
“There’s another nonprofit that gives us helmets, and we bring them out here,” he said.
For more information about the Ellsworth County Christmas Store and how to get involved, find them on their Facebook page.