ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. -- The timeline was small.
The response was not.
Thanks to the efforts of Arnold Air Force Base team members, Christmas will be brighter for more than 100 area children.
Gifts purchased by personnel at Arnold, headquarters of Arnold Engineering Development Complex, through the Project Christmas gift drive were collected from the base on Dec. 9 to be prepared for distribution.
Project Christmas, formerly known as the AEDC Angel Tree, allows members of the Arnold workforce to sponsor local children from a list distributed to installation personnel. Team members may then purchase gifts on each child’s listed wants and needs.
The children may not otherwise receive Christmas gifts from family members due to financial situations and other hardships.
“As far as the response to me, personally, having done this last year and then doing it this year, I’m not going to lie, I was really, really, really surprised about how well it went this year,” said Tech Sgt. Jason Wiggins, who led both this and last year’s Project Christmas efforts at Arnold.
Wiggins noted support this year was especially impressive considering the recent government shutdown. The multiweek furlough of government civilians and contractors led to concerns that base personnel would be unable to give.
The shutdown also resulted in an abbreviated timeframe to purchase gifts. In years past, organizers have attempted to give the workforce around six to eight weeks to purchase gifts before the collection of the items in early December. Because most civilian and contractor personnel returned to work around mid-November, the gift-purchasing period had to be shortened to around three weeks.
The first list of sponsorable children included a little more than 30 names. Wiggins said all were sponsored within an hour of the email going out.
Because of the quick response, Wiggins reached back out to the charity to see if more names could be added to the Arnold list. Those, too, were quickly sponsored. This occurred several additional times.
“They just kept getting taken over and over and over again quickly where even the charity itself couldn’t keep up,” Wiggins said. “My concern with the short timeframe was completely deleted and obliterated by the actual fact that even the charity couldn’t keep up.”
When all was said and done, Arnold personnel sponsored 105 children.
“As far as what you’re seeing, this is a bunch of people who have gone above and beyond as far as what us and the charity expected,” Wiggins said.
The list of children was provided this year by Grams Community Network. According to founder and CEO Lashonda Morehead, Grams offers community support and resources to grandparent caretakers to help these older adults provide for the children in their care.
Grams has partnered with Arnold AFB since 2019. Among the charity’s programs is its Christmas Sponsorship Program from which the list provided to Arnold this year was compiled.
“In our program we cover the grandparents, but we also help the unhoused during Christmastime and single-parent caretakers,” Morehead said. “Our criteria is just that you’re unable to provide gifts for your child for Christmas.”
Morehead expressed her appreciation to Arnold team members for their support.
“I’m extremely grateful, extreme gratefulness just to have Arnold Air Force Base and all of the employees – contractors and military staff – once again come through for their community in need,” she said.
Wiggins likewise extended his gratitude to those across Arnold who sponsored a child or, in some cases, multiple children during this year’s Project Christmas gift drive.
“I’m definitely appreciative, but obviously I can’t be as appreciative as the families who actually are receiving this,” Wiggins said. “Times throughout the year, these families can struggle to get basic needs, and so for these kids to actually get something where they feel loved, cared for and excited whenever they’re probably told throughout the entire year, ‘No, no, no.’
“It’s nice for them to actually be winners and have this time where it’s not sad, where their friends and schoolmates get something, they actually get something and feel cared for.”