While this Christmas may have come and gone for many of us, for a group of kids in the Lexington area it was one to remember as VMI athletes representing 12 different teams rallied together to supply presents to the families that otherwise may not have been able to afford the gifts their children deserved.

The Toys for Tots charity, while only a year old at VMI, was created by United States Marine Corps Major Bill Hendricks almost 60 years ago in 1947.  The original call to action brought in around 5,000 toys from the Greater Los Angeles region in California.  In 2014 Marine Toys for Tots brought in over $284 million becoming their most successful drive ever.

At only a year old, the cadet-athletes who participated were able to gather enough toys to overflow five large boxes, about 75 toys, for the surrounding families. The Southern Conference encourages schools to have their student-athletes get out in the community and help with projects; which goes hand in hand with VMI’s leadership development ideals. Garrett Warren, class of 2016, came up with the idea for a toy drive and James Weber, VMI’s director of the Cadet-Athlete Development Office, expressed his fascination by explaining “They took it and ran with it… Every cadet-athlete that brought a toy in brought it with a smile.”  Cadets are only happy to help but many were more than willing to go out of their way or take time out of their schedule to find a toy at Wal-Mart.

Catherine Berry, a water polo player from the class of 2018, explained that her team pooled together their lot of money and made several trips to Wal-Mart to pick out “tons of different toys.” Warren said that when he returned from Thanksgiving furlough there was a pile of toys on his desks left for him by his teammates. “I would just call it special,” he said, “even though I’m not going to be there to see it, I know kids are going to open those toys and be very happy.