Virginia Christian, at 84, probably weighs nearly 100 pounds soaking wet, but the diminutive grandmother-type, and the aunt of Calistoga Mayor Jack Gingles, has been the powerful local driving force behind a little-heralded nationwide program that sends gifts of goodie-filled shoeboxes to needy children all over the world.

The program, Operation Christmas Child, or OCC, caught Christian’s attention about 13 years ago, when the late Dr. Hershel Lamp described it to her, who used to participate in the wife Trudy. Christian became excited by the programs and has worked with it ever since, calling it the single most important duty in her life.

“I was pretty excited about it right away and that first year I put my name in and address in a few of the boxes and eventually got some thank you letters from people in Croatia,” Christian said. “That stoked my enthusiasm for the program and I’ve been a part of it ever since.”

This year, the program collected enough goodies to fill 140 boxes, “the most I’ve ever had,” Christian said.

OCC is a program that sprang from one man’s visit with suffering children on the Korean island of Kojedo in the late 1960s — a visit that moved him to write, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”

That man, Bob Pierce, in 1970, started the Samaritan’s Purse program in 1970, a program, or ministry, that has helped meet emergency needs of communities in crisis areas through existing evangelical mission agencies and national churches. He met his successor, a young student named Franklin Graham — son of the world-renowned Billy Graham — and it was Graham who started OCC in 1993. Pierce himself died of leukemia in 1978.

The operation’s Internet Web site, as well as some of its print material, carries images of children from many different communities around the world happily toting the gaily decorated boxes, filled with items like washcloths, toothbrushes, toothpaste and of course, the things that thrill a youngster — a few pieces of American candy and a toy or two — contents that American children, in a land of iPod devices and video games and other high tech devices to occupy their time and energy might take for granted, or accept with less than an enthusiastic response.

“But for the children who receive these gifts, these boxes are very special,” said Teena Ingram, director of the Highlands Christian Fellowship Preschool, where the children began following Christian’s example of preparing the gifts for needy through the OCC program this year. “Just think, a new, clean washcloth, toothbrushes, some candy and a toy, and more — and even the shoeboxes themselves — they’re gifts, too, and they cherish them.”

The program at the preschool got off to a slow start, but Ingram has vowed to have “three times” as many boxes next year.

Christmas all year

For Christian, the effort to fill as many boxes as possible starts soon after each year’s collection of boxes are packed and shipped off to part unknown.

“For me, this year’s Christmas season is pretty much finished,” Christian said. “But pretty soon, I’ll start all over, collecting toys and things all year long and storing them until such a time as we pack them and send them off.”

At the same time Christian and her merry band of helpers — Jim and Judy Heatherington, Tom Kincaid, Jackie Baker, Barbara Begley, Dora Devorak, Rachel McCormick, all of Calistoga, plus Elfreda Adams and Marie Okum, who both drive up from Benicia — spring into action, millions of other people all across American are doing the same thing.

“There are many others, without whom this effort would be very difficult,” Christian said. “For example, I have a friend in San Francisco who supplies all the toothbrushes.”

Additionally, local Calistoga dentists, doctors Leroy Bowser and Gina Hitchcock, supply the toothpaste. The managers of Rancho de Calistoga, Jim and Judy Heatherington, provide the toys and Bill Shaw, owner of CalMart, provided a huge variety of candies, left over from Halloween.

“When our group gets together each year to put the boxes together from the gifts we’ve collected all year long, I like to order sandwiches for lunch from the deli at Cal Mart.,” Virginia said. “This year, I told Janet Butler, who is the deli manager what I was ordering the sandwiches for and she said she’d take care of the cost as her contribution to the program.”

That was before Shaw found out about it, Christian said. “When he found out what we were doing, he just took the receipt and said ‘I’ll just take care of this,’ and that was all there was to it.”

Historically, the group stored the gifts throughout the year in the club house at Rancho de Calistoga, but this year, with the demolition of the building planned, the group had to find a new place to store all the goodies — that’s when Kaye Wheeler, 94, who still volunteers at the St. Helena Hospital, offered to let the group store the materials in a storage building she wasn’t using.

The only things that don’t make it into the boxes are violence-based toys like soldiers, toy guns — and religious items.

“Some of the boxes go to war zones — like those early boxes I sent so long ago that ended up in war-torn Croatia,” Christian said. “Sometimes the boxes go to Muslim nations, where they would be unwelcome by the local governments if they held Christian materials, and we want the children to enjoy their gifts without fear of reprisal.”

Drop-off week

The national drop-off week for the OCC program was last week. Once the group had packed their 140 boxes, they loaded them into two vehicles and hauled them to a drop-off point in Santa Rosa.

From there, Christian explained, the boxes made their way to a central clearing house in Santa Ana, in Southern California, where they go through a final inspection for any used items, in appropriate toys, chocolate or perishable items (the chocolate might melt), liquid items like lotion, bubbles or shampoo, vitamins, medicines, ointments or coughdrops and breakable items like mirrors, china dolls or snowglobes.

Other items OK to go include items not many kids in the U.S. would consider gift-worthy, like pencils and sharpeners, writing pads and paper, solar-powered calculators, yo-yos, jump ropes, small cars, balls, stuffed animals and dolls, kazoos and harmonicas.

“In a country where the children may have never received any gifts at all, these decorated boxes are filled with treasures, and are absolutely adored,” Christian said. “That to me is Christmas, knowing we can reach out to others and do so much with so little.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” she said. “Two members of our group, Maria Oken and Elfreda Adams, both spent time in work camps during the Second World War — and they’ve told me how wonderful it is to get boxes of gifts like these — even if it is just a toothbrush. Elfreda said she had never had a toothbrush until she was old enough to be married, and she was so appreciative.

“I’m 84 years old, and this project continues to inspire me,” Christian said. “And I plan to keep it going for as long as I’m able to stand up and deliver the boxes.”

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