Eleven-year-old Samuel Love of Chicago carried a brown paper sack with a Christmas present in it — one of more than 2,000 toys he collected for Faulkner County tornado victims. He searched for a boy wearing a number corresponding to the package.
Samuel, who said he prefers to be called Sam, found 9-year-old Daniel Deal, who had a No. 25 pinned on his shirt. Daniel shyly took the sack and hugged his benefactor.
“I wanted to give to them instead of myself,” Sam said.
Sam started collecting toys three years ago after hearing about Hurricane Sandy on the news, and this year, he decided to bring toys to Arkansas when he saw what the April 27 tornado had done to Faulkner County.
“I saw some trees were broken back there,” he said on Monday, pointing behind Vilonia Church of the Nazarene. Later, he was given a tour of the destruction the storm wreaked.
Sam and his family, including his brother, Joshua, 15, and their father, Victor, wore matching shirts printed with “Sam & Santa’s Toy Drive.”
It was a party atmosphere in the Life Center of the church with bounce houses, an inflatable slide, hot dogs, cookies and crafts. “It’s good, happy, fun,” Sam said.
Victor said his son came to him three years ago and said he wanted to have a Christmas party, and Victor said no.
Then, Victor said, Sam surprised him by explaining that he wanted to collect toys for other children.
“Once he said that, that was a no-brainer,” Victor said. He said that this year, Sam considered helping Buffalo, New York; Southern California; or Arkansas. When Sam did his research and saw the scenes of destruction in Faulkner County, he said, “Daddy, we’re going to Arkansas,” Victor said.
“He’s made an impression in Arkansas,” Vilonia Mayor James Firestone said of Sam.
Firestone said that when he heard what Sam was doing, “I thought, ‘My goodness, what a special young man.’ It’s so special because the little guys have been through a lot. People have been displaced. Their lives have been turned upside down. It’s a wonderful thing that’s going on here today.”
Many of the parents and grandparents who brought their children to the event were thankful for the young boy’s generosity.
“Bless Samuel’s heart; it’s wonderful,” said Jeannie Grissom of Vilonia. Grissom, a parent-involvement coordinator for the Vilonia School District, is raising her grandchildren, Ryan Deal, 6; Daniel, 9; and Jeannie Deal, 12, who was home sick on Monday.
Grissom’s home was damaged in the 2011 tornado, by straight-line winds about 1 1/2 years ago and again by the April tornado.
During this year’s storm, “my sister called and she said, ‘Get out — get out. It’s a monster tornado. This time it’s going to take your house.” The home Grissom shares with her husband, her 77-year-old, legally blind father and the grandchildren was severely damaged.
“The outside looked like a porcupine; it had stuff stuck in it,” Ryan said. The boys lost all their belongings.
Grissom said the family doesn’t have a Christmas tree this year because the storage building where it was stored blew away during the tornado. Last week, their 40-gallon water heater flooded the home, she said, with a little laugh.
“Every time something happens — I’m a woman of faith — and I hear this soft voice, ‘The Lord will provide,’” she said. When she was worried about Christmas dinner for this year, she heard the “soft voice.” When she went to the mailbox later that day, “There was this beautiful card,” she said. An anonymous person had written that their father said “to help someone who does for others and doesn’t expect anything in return,” and the giver was told about Grissom. In the card were two $200 Visa gift cards, which Grissom used to buy food.
“I think it’s God using Sam to provide for a lot of us having a hard time,” she said. Grissom started crying, and she looked down at her grandsons. “These are happy tears because we have each other, and that’s what counts, and we have people like Sam.”
No one looked happier than Karla Arendall of Vilonia, a mother of seven children, but her story was a series of sad events. In 2011, her home was “flattened.”
“It took everything down and left us all lying on the slab,” she said. “We were doing a lot of praying at the time. It’s just by the grace of God we survived.”
Arendall is still grieving for her husband, who died Feb. 21.
“He woke up and said, ‘Something’s wrong,’ and he was turning pale and couldn’t breathe,” she said. He was dead within 15 minutes. “He died in front of all my kids. That was the hardest thing we’ve been through.”
Then the tornado tore through her neighborhood, and some of the family got in a neighbor’s storm cellar. She took her mother to a community safe room.
“We were just praying it didn’t hit our house because we didn’t have insurance,” she said.
“We lost all our stuff and everything, but thanks to the goodness in people’s hearts, we’ve got everything back. We’re very thankful for what God has done,” she said. “It’s a choice, too. You can either wallow in pity or put a smile on your face and keep going.”
Arkansas Baptist Builders is rebuilding the family’s home for the second time, she said.
Her daughter Mihala, 8, got a doll, but her favorite gift was a soft Teddy bear that she hugged and said she was going to sleep with.
Matt Morris, 35, and his wife, Tabitha, 32, have a blended family, and three of their six children attended the event with them.
Tabitha said they lost their personal belongings and their vehicles when the tornado hit in April.
“When I looked out, I saw it coming, so I just went to the bathroom and prayed,” she said. “It was one of the scariest experiences of my life.”
Daughter Jenna Hyten, 11, said it was “very scary.”
“You didn’t know if you were going to open the door and everything was going to be gone,” Jenna said. “Some of the craziest things stayed. Our door wreath didn’t move. The Dollar General sign — if we’d had a front yard — it would have been in it.”
Jenna’s sister, Zooey Hyten, 8, described the event at the church as “awesome.” She was holding donated books and a candy cane, smiling from ear to ear. She showed one of the books, Soul Surfer. “I love this movie,” she said, adding that she wanted to compare the book and the movie.
Sandy Towles, coordinator of the Vilonia Disaster Recovery Alliance, said organizers only had about 10 days to get things ready. Victor Love called City Hall to tell them the news, and an employee then told the police chief to “Call Mrs. Sandy,” she said, laughing.
The Interfaith and Partners Disaster Recovery Alliance also hosted the event.
Most of the survivors attending Monday’s event came from the Vilonia area, but others benefited.
“We have loaded up a bunch of the toys and taken them to Mayflower,” said Janice Mann, disaster-response coordinator for the United Methodist Church of Arkansas. Others will be given out as case managers call clients, she said.
Sam, who said he loves baseball — his dad said he’s an “amazing player” — and video games, has had help getting the toys.
“My friends, they support me in it. They bring toys to school,” he said. Sam said he had a movie party where kids could get in free with a donation of a toy and received about 1,000 toys.
Kathy Payne and her son Ben, 17, of Vilonia were helping with Monday’s event in honor of her 19-year-old daughter, Angela, who died in August of ovarian cancer. Angela started a pillowcase ministry at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and was named Vilonia’s Outstanding Youth of the Year in 2012.
“This would be her kind of event; she would be here,” Payne said. “She was in the hospital when the tornado hit, and she was so mad. She said, ‘Mom, I want to go help,’” Payne said.
Ben was playing dodgeball with the kids at the event, letting himself be the target. “She would have loved kicking the soccer ball at me, too,” he said of his sister.
Payne was impressed with what Sam has accomplished. “Kids can do a lot more than they think they can,” she said.
Kathy Porter of Black Oak Ranch Estates said her home was hit in 2011, and the 2014 tornado destroyed her mobile home. She volunteered to help at Monday’s event.
“I’m trying to get the Black Oak families in. We’re still trying to do cleanup, trying to get volunteers out there to clean up,” Porter said. “We need this. This here is good because everybody can talk to everybody.”
She introduced Sam to a family who had received some of the donated toys.
“It’s great; I’m feeling it,” Sam said of the appreciation in the room. He held a gift sack of goodies. “Santa gave it to me,” he said. Sam said he might come back to Vilonia soon.
“You’re one of our families now,” Porter told him.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.