Newsletter
Great things continue to happen to and for THE HAPPY FACTORY. The
committee in Salt Lake City area are to be commended for their work
in producing the very enjoyable and successful gala. They are now
working to find land or a building for the (Future) home of the Wasatch
front Happy Factory.
On a recent trip to Arizona my wife and I took time to visit Mack
and Beverly Jones in Mesa. Mack recently celebrated his 93rd birthday.
He has a small shop in his garage where he works six hours a day,
five or six days a week. His goal is to make ten toys a day, ready
for oiling. He averaged better than 50 toys last week and recently
70.
He said his tools are mostly new because he already wore out one
set. What a joy it was to see the TRUE SPIRIT OF GIVING as demonstrated
by both Mack and Beverly. They are truly examples of what The Happy
Factory represents.
I want to thank all of those volunteers who give of themselves, their
time, talents, and money, to help us provide a small token of love
to someone who needs it.
What a night it was to see the room at the Energy Solution Center
filled with happy excited people. They were all filled with The Happy
Factory spirit. There were slides shown on the walls of the children
all over the world experiencing the love of their little toy. Frank
Layden and Mark Eaton were the MC’s and had the crowd in stitches
all evening. The auctioneers provided a show of their own. And we
had a very successful auction. Thanks again to Jon Absey and his outstanding
committee for a very successful gala.
Because of the generosity of FedEx during the Three Wishes show of
their donation to ship toys to needy children around the world, more
than 7,300 children have a Happy Factory toy. Most of these children
live in Third World countries. This is probably the first toy any
of those children have ever had and it may be the only toy they will
ever own.
“It is not our responsibility to make the children worthy of
world, rather it is to make the world worthy of the children.”
Thank you FedEx for helping The Happy Factory make the world a little
better for them.
We recently received a request from the King’s Day Care Center
and Nursery in Uganda. They have about 102 children between the ages
of one and five. The center was established in response to the need
for early childhood development services for children in the low end
economy. Children form the top end families have an opportunity to
register in the few centers where, unfortunately it is very expensive
and thus unaffordable for the majority of city suburb dwellers. The
center therefore a timely response to support needs of children in
the low end of the population. Your toys were received with a lot
of excitement. We are happy to report that all the children expressed
their gratitude by scrambling for the toys. It was real drama seeing
how our children reacted. It was a real illustration that a key need
has been addressed. The Happy Factory donation is the largest donation
we have every received.
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Our2 ½ year old son, Finn was tragically and accidently struck
by a car last April and died as a result. This past Christmastime
as we, as a family, we searched for something meaningful we could
do in honor and remembrance of our darling Finn, we came across The
Happy Factory Website. We knew it was perfect the minute we saw it
because Finn’s one true love in life had always been to play
with his cars. He ate with them, he slept with them and was always
lining them up.
In November, we were able to take our other boys - Olle (age 7) and
Leif (age 5) to your wonderful Happy Factory and had a really sweet
experience with them making the cars, remembering Finn, and knowing
he will always be a part of our family. The people you have running
your factory are magnificent and we had a better experience with our
children than we could have ever hoped for.
Thank you so much for giving us this great opportunity. Making cars
in honor of Finn will surely become a great tradition for our family.
We are sure he would approve.
We would like you to have the money we would have spent for Finn’s
Christmas presents this year. ($200)
Thank you for all you do. You are helping people more than you know.
A few days ago a reporter from the local paper called to see if they
could come to interview some of the volunteers. We said “Well,
we should be here on Thursday.” He said “We don’t
want to interview you, we want to interview your volunteers.”
We told him that would be fine. We realized that our first two volunteers
are still helping. Ray Baumgartner and Richard Gunn were our first
two volunteers. I’ll never forget the morning that Ray Baumgartner
pulled up to our little shop and said “I understand that you
make toys for little children.” I told him that we did and he
said, “Can you use some help?” I said, “We have
just heard that there are more than 500 million children in the world
in poverty.” And, he said, “Well lets get started.”
The next morning he brought Richard Gunn with him and they have been
coming ever since. When they came the other day, we presented them
with a letter and a Star Fish plaque. The letter mentioned the 500
million children in poverty and because of their efforts they had
made a difference. The plaque has a Star Fish on it and is inscribed
with the Star Fish story.
“A man walking along the beach discovered another man hurriedly
throwing stranded star fish back in to the ocean. You must be crazy
the one man said, “There are thousands of miles of beach covered
with star fish, you can’t possible make a difference..”
Undeterred, the other man bent down, picked up another star fish and
tossed it back in to the water. “It sure made a difference to
that one he tells the other man.”
