Santa Claus visited the Port O’Connor Fire Station on December 10tth. Luna and Lyric Lopez were among the delighted kids who got to talk to him – and enjoy a ride on the fire truck!

Letters to Santa From Local Second Graders

Dear Santa, Thank you for my bike last year. I am so happy for what you got me! It is the beast thing I have ever had in my life! I have been waiting all year for Christmas. I hope this Christmas will be so fun! Can I please have unicorn slime and a bag of hot tamales. I will not cry or have a fit if I do not get what I want.
Sincerely, Lexi – Port O’Connor

Dear Santa, I have been really good this year. I was trying not to fight with my brother. Can I have an iphone 7 and a computre and a ipadd? What is your phone number? You are awsom!
Love, Gaige Cady – Seadrift

Dear Santa, Are you elves and Mrs. Claus ok? I would like a yacht for Christmas. I know that I can’t drive it but my dad will take me out to the Gulf in the blue water. I will go off shore to catch a Bluefin Tuna. Thank you for all of the presents. Christmas is my favorite season. Thank you for all of my toys last year. I hope you feel good this year. You are nice and I hope you stay nice. I understand if you don’t give me a yacht because I’m not old enough to have one. But I would really love one!
Love,
Waylon – Port O’Connor

Dear Santa, My name is Nikolas. I have been very nice. Here are some things I did that were nice. I did the dishis and cleaning the living room. If you’re not too busy here are some things I would love. May I please have a big metal tall remote control truck. May I have a dirt bike. Something I need is mittens. How are the elves?
Love, Nikolas Clayton- Seadrift

Dear Santa, I know you have been working hard and your elves have been too. I want to ask you 3 questions. How do you like your job? How do you like your elves? Do you like your reindeers? I like Christmas and I know you like Christmas too. What I really want for Christmas is a puppy because they are cute and cuddly. I don’t want anything else because I have everything I need.
Love, Alexandriia – Port O’Connor

Dear Santa, I been cinda good and bad. I rock my sister to slep. How are you? Pless let me have a doll and a dron and a toy car. How do you eat so miney cookies. Santa, I love you!
Preslei Haden – Seadrift

Annette, Mark and Kole with the little pink bike

A little pink bike with training wheels and a baby seat for a doll will be lovingly placed under a tiny artificial Christmas tree in a small trailer on Christmas morning. This little bike made its way to POC in the annual Freeport to POC Toy Run.

Three people who do not know the child who will get this bike made this special gift possible. Annette Houseman, who happens to be our own Chris Mapp’s little sister asked two friends to join her in the Toy Run. Annette is a retired executive who lives in Freeport and has participated in 8 or more Toy Runs. Boat Captain Kole Rudasill is a young Aggie from College Station who breeds and sells deer and had a new fishing boat named Cheyenne that he really wanted to run down the coast. So, with no ties to POC he allowed himself to be recruited by Annette. First Mate Mark Poole is a busy Oil and Gas Account Exec in Sugarland and was convinced by Annette to leave serious behind and join them on the adventure.

These three pooled their own money, asked some friends and coworkers to donate and filled the boat with toys and bikes. None of them have children, live in POC or nearby areas, or have family served by The Toy Run. They gave time, money and toys out of generous hearts. They arrived in the first boat on Saturday, sunburned and smiling and unloaded those toys along with thousands of others at Clarks Inn. Trucks and trailers were loaded down with more toys than Santa’s sleigh and made their way to the Community Center where those toys were sorted for distribution.

More than 6000 toys were given to more than 2800 children and teens in POC and surrounding areas who wouldn’t have had Christmas otherwise. 45 POC children were placed on the Angel Tree list and will be sponsored for Christmas. A trailer of toys was sent to Rockport to be given to children of families who are still trying to recover from Hurricane Harvey. Children, each deserving and in need for many different reasons, in Seadrift, Port Lavaca, Tivoli, Refugio, and other communities will get toys on Christmas morning. Children in foster care, those whose parents may be incarcerated or hospitalized, many in group homes and care facilities will all be served by the POC Toy Run toys.

The family of a little girl who will shout with joy over the little pink bike is one of those families. Her daddy John was working a good job when life changed. He drove an old beat up car to work, but with two little ones at home and a baby on the way he couldn’t afford another. Then, the baby was born with a hole in her heart. Surgeries and stress and days off work made keeping the car impossible, and loss of the car meant the job was next and John and Leslie were soon unemployed, overextended and feeling so alone. Hurricane Harvey took their home and they were displaced for weeks until a POC friend connected them with a donated trailer with only two small bedrooms, but to them it seems like much more. They didn’t expect to have gifts for the kids this year but now they will thanks to the Angel Tree donors, the Toy Run and the generosity of this community.

So, thanks to Annette, and Mark, and Kole and all those Toy Runners who brought boatloads of toys. Wendy Fry coordinated more than 35 boats in this year’s run, and those same boats made our annual Lighted Boat Parade something special. Thanks to Wanda and Judith and Teddy and all the POC Hardware staff who organize the Angel Tree. Please take time to go by and get an angel off the tree. you could buy a few clothes and things to wrap and give with the toys. Thanks to school staff who help us find those local children who need a little help this year. And huge thanks to Marie Hawes and her enormous team of volunteers who work tirelessly to distribute all the toys to all the children in many organizations and facilities. It is an enormous undertaking and they do an amazing job.

One of the Toy Run boats loaded with toys-Wendy Fry

Toys ready for distribution at the Community Center
-Russell Cain

Thank you, Toy Run! And thank you, all the local volunteers!

Christmas Luncheon Greeters
David Walker, Grace Stone, and Otto Hardt

Donna Vuichard, Marie Hawes, and Madeline Bourg celebrating Citizen of the Year.

Beverly Clifton and Martie Gonzales
Salt Blossom Shop donated door prize flowers

POC Service Club was honored to host our annual Senior Christmas Luncheon on Friday, December 1, 2017. Delicious food, charming friends old and new, door prizes and photo booth fun made this year extra special. Our Citizen of the Year, Madeline Bourg, was honored for all she does in our community. See her story elsewhere in this edition of the paper. We are lucky to get to work with her often.

We also donated $5,000 to the Friends of the Port O’Connor Library Building Fund. We gave $500 to the Toy Run Fund to help purchase extra toys and bikes in this year of extra needs. The Service Club has many ongoing projects we help to fund as well including scholarships for local students, memorial donations to honor and remember local friends and family, community endeavors such as classroom volunteering and PTO donations, money given directly to our local teachers to fund needs in their classrooms, cash donations to the POC Benevolence Fund to supply holiday baskets to families in need, Senior Lunch donations and many others. Our local garage sales helped to fund these donations in large part.

If you would like to help in our outreach, we are still taking donations of like new clothing, décor and household goods for our Spring Garage Sale scheduled for the first Saturday in April. You can call Donna Vuichard at 361-237-0476 if you need assistance in donating to our sale.

Service Club members will be busy right through the holidays as we bake for the fundraisers, help with community events and give back when and where we are asked. Maybe you would like to find a place to meet new friends and help others. POC Service Club could be the perfect place. Women of all ages have found themselves a part of our team and joined in our service and projects. We meet at the POC Community Center on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month at 10:00 a.m. We would love for you to visit our meetings and consider joining us.

Thanks again to our community for your support and backing of our work and efforts and we look forward to doing more for and with our community in the new year. So, until next time, be safe, live simply, love openly, forgive generously and remember this quote from Jim Rohn, a simple farmer who became an entrepreneur and motivator of many who said, “Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have.” Come by and let us add to your bucket of blessings by showing you some great places to add to someone else’s life by giving of yourself.

Brigid Berger and Lisa Fricke Berger were Photo Booth Fun Coordinators

Santa & Mrs. Claus with their Lighted Boat Parade elves

Enjoying the Holiday with Family and Friends

Greetings from the island everyone. I hope that all of you are doing well and bundling up in this pre-winter weather we have been having. Winter doesn’t officially begin until the 21st, but you sure could have fooled me last week when the wind chill temps on the island were in the mid 30’s. Yikes! And a wind driven drizzling rain made it even more miserable. Corky and Jetty and I just bundled up and stayed pretty much inside for those few days. Island cabin fever sets in very quickly during those times.

The week before Thanksgiving we finally got my dad, Henry, moved back to Seadrift from Brazoria, where he had been living for many years. He and my mom live within seed spitting distance of each other, and it’s so nice having both parents so close again. My siblings and I are very blessed to still have both of them with us, and God’s willing, they will be for many years to come.

` Thanksgiving was great last month for Corky and I. We spent the night prior at Mom’s, so that morning I was able to visit and have coffee with Mom and Dad. Early that afternoon I headed back to POC and had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal and fellowship at Britton and Susan’s house with great friends. The food was excellent and that night we all sat around the fire pit, a perfect ending to a most wonderful day.

Well the chickens finally started laying a few weeks ago, yay! The 15 hens haven’t fully all kicked into laying mode yet, but I’m getting 4-6 eggs a day right now. It’s a great treat being able to have and provide fresh eggs for myself and to give to friends and family.

The island house and yard are decorated for Christmas! Thank you so much, Susan and Britton, for helping get all the lights and decorations set up and extension cords and splitters connected. The house and yard really do look beautiful, I’m very happy with the outcome. The time and effort involved became worth it when I was told the lights and decorations brought someone the holiday spirit, when it otherwise would have been absent. Each year the island display will become bigger and better! Christmas strong!!

In all my years on the island, I had never been involved or even attended the POC Toy Run and Lighted Boat Parade, well that has now changed. On Saturday afternoon, my best friend, Susan, and I donned our Santa hats and went to the Freeport-To-Port O’Connor Toy Run drop-off site, which was at Clark’s Hotel on the Intracoastal waterway. This was the final destination where nearly 40 boats made the trek from Freeport to POC to drop off toys for area children.

This truly was a wonderful affair to see and be involved in. While Susan took dozens of pictures to capture the event for the POC Chamber of Commerce Facebook page, we both helped unload the boats of many bags of toys and bicycles, all of which were loaded into trailers for later delivery to the kids. This marked the 15th annual Freeport-To-Port O’Connor Toy Run event, and I was honored to be a part of it, and will continue to do so.

And then later that same night, I was part of the 26th annual POC Lighted Boat Parade, sponsored by the POC Chamber of Commerce. This event was a LOT of fun! The evening before, I went into town and helped friends Susan, Britton, Don and Lori decorate Earl Long’s pontoon boat. We loaded that boat down with lights and decorations, and the following night we used it in the lighted boat parade. Earl was a spot-on Santa Claus, looking the part perfectly, and his better half, Carla, was Mrs. Claus, while the rest of us were their elves, decked out in matching elf attire. The nighttime weather was perfect and we had a blast! We are all looking forward to doing it again next year.

That’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a very Merry Christmas!

Clint’s Island Home

Snow on Seadrift’s Art Boat
Photo by Dieter Erhard

I have been waist deep in snow several times, driven through blizzards and experienced negative temperatures with a snowboard attached to my feet. I have sat in a log cabin next to a fire as snow fell against the massive windows that looked over snow capped mountains. I have chased leaves down clear blue rivers as the water slowly began to turn to ice. I have shaken the branches of a tree as it dusted my snow boots and have breathed in the crisp cold air as chipmunks tested a log nearby.

NONE of this compares to snow in Texas.

NONE of this compares to hope filled children praying for snow. NONE of this compares to parents waking their children up at midnight, wearing whatever they could find in their closets, to give their children the gift of snowflakes. NONE of this compares to newlyweds writing their initials in the snow for the first time. NONE of this compares to families embracing one another as snow collects on their Crocs. NONE of this compares to this snow day where a child awakened inside of us all. NONE of this compares to the absolute joy in the hearts of Texans on this snowy morning.

NONE of this compares to watching people who survived a historical hurricane as this event destroyed their homes, livelihood, lands and so much more – step outside and catch snowflakes on their tongues, laugh and build snowmen.

Texas is great and so is God who loves His people.

Snow in POC Dec. 8 – Christina Hall photo