HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — Members of the Hot Springs Village Woodworkers are a lot like Santa’s elves, busily working behind the scenes to create a variety of Christmas toys for deserving children in Garland and Saline counties.
Each year, through their annual Christmas toy project, members of the club build hundreds of handmade, wooden toys that are donated to six area agencies: Mountain Pine Head Start, the Garland County Foster Parents Association, Ouachita Children’s Center, Hillcrest Children’s Home, Community Christian Outreach (The Care Center), and Mountain Pine Preschool. The agencies then distribute the toys to the children they serve.
“It’s a way of giving back to, especially, the kids in the community,” said Bill Gruhn, president of the Village Woodworkers. “We are told that a lot of them would not receive anything for Christmas if it wasn’t for the toys we built.”
The Village Woodworkers group, which was founded about 15 years ago, provides a forum to promote the sharing of ideas, techniques, skill development and creativity while also benefiting the community through projects.
The club comprises about 112 woodworking enthusiasts of every skill level.
“There is a wide variety of people,” said Tom Funk, club member and toy project coordinator. “Some people have not done much woodworking and consider themselves novices, all the way through people that have made their living doing high-end cabinet work and that sort of thing.”
Seventy-eight members, divided into 12 teams, participated in the toy project. The teams met once a week for about seven months and presented the finished toys to representatives from the agencies in November.
“It’s a wonderful organization, and it’s certainly a labor of love,” Care Center Director Brenda Burton said. “It also provides [the children] with a keepsake toy because they are made so durable, with heavy wood, that they’ll last a lifetime.”
A ministry of First Baptist Church of Benton, the Care Center services low-income families and individuals, as well as those with mental and physical disabilities. Each year, the center hands out the toys at its annual Christmas party.
“People are very receptive of tangible expressions of love, and these toys are a vehicle to open their hearts with love to us,” Burton said.
Toys made this year include doll cradles, highchairs, biplanes, fire trucks, helicopters, rocking horses, tricycles and board games. For older children, the group built footlockers, lap desks and jewelry boxes.
An additional team, the Doll Ladies, procure and refurbish dolls for the cradles and highchairs and sew two outfits for each doll.
The annual toy project was started about 12 years ago, he said, by a group of members who realized there were some deserving children in the area.
“From what I understood, they made about 50 toys in the very beginning,” Funk said.
This year, the woodworkers made 557 toys, donating 428 to the six agencies. The remaining toys are sold to raise money for materials for the following year. Toys are available for purchase at the Artchurch Studio, 301 Whittington Ave. in Hot Springs.
The Village Woodworkers also receive donations of scrap wood from area cabinet shops, including JDK Custom Inc. in Hot Springs, Woodunique in Mountain Pine and Conestoga Wood Specialties in Jacksonville.
“It puts this material that has a value to good use,” said Gene Dunn, the shop foreman at Woodunique, “and there is more of it than we can actually use, so instead of throwing it away, we would rather share it. And that’s material that the woodworkers don’t have to buy,”
Dunn is also a former member and a past president of the Garland County Foster Parents Association — one of the groups that receives toys from the Village Woodworkers each year. Dunn and his wife have fostered 253 children and adopted four. Though they no longer serve as foster parents, Dunn is still involved with the group as the intermediary between the Foster Parents Association and the Village Woodworkers.
“I’m still going to be the go-between because I still want to support it,” he said. “We have children that we adopted through the foster system, and I have friends that are foster parents.”
The children are “excited” to receive the toys each year, Dunn said.
In addition to the annual toy project, the Village Woodworkers participate in several other projects that benefit area children. Three years ago, the group started building hardwood bookcases for students in Jessieville and Fountain Lake schools. This year, students of Mountain Pine schools will also receive bookcases..
“The three grade schools here have a program where they test the kids’ reading ability at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year,” Gruhn said. “Those kids that advance the most get a bookcase with books.”
This year, the woodworkers will build about 50 bookcases, he said, which will be supplied with appropriate-reading-level books and given to the students to keep in their homes.
“We do get a grant for the books, but it is not to be used for any wood,” Gruhn said.
Club members also build birdhouses designed by students at the Artchurch Studio, a nonprofit art education organization for children and adults. The birdhouses are then auctioned off to raise funds for the Artchurch.
“They are really generous with the art that they make and the stuff they do for the kids in the community,” Dana Fleming, program director of the Artchurch, said about the woodworkers.
The Village Woodworkers meet from 6:30-9 p.m. the second Wednesday of each month at the Ponce De Leon Center, Ouachita Activities Building in Hot Springs Village. Guests are welcome, and anyone can join. Family membership is $15 a year. For more information, visit www.villagewoodworkers.org.
“It’s a great organization,” Gruhn said. “We have a good time together.”