Teamsters Joint Council 13 again helps sick children with donation to Snowflake Village

$14,975 to provide gifts for kids hospitalized on Christmas Day

This will be another happy Christmas for children confined to a hospital bed on Christmas Day thanks to the generosity of Teamsters Joint Council 13, who, for the second year, has donated “tons” of children’s toys, games, stuffed animals to St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s Snowflake Village program, reports Council President Marvin Kropp.

A check for $14,975 – the proceeds from the union’s second annual Dan McKay Bass Tournament – was presented to the hospital to buy gifts for the Snowflake Village program. Last year, the Council donated the tourney’s $12,124 to the effort, then the largest single donation ever received for the program.

Snowflake Village is a free shopping bazaar for parents whose children are in the hospital on Christmas Day but whose financial circumstances are such that they can’t afford to buy gifts for their children. Parents come in, pick out the appropriate gifts and wrap them.

For those kids whose parents can’t be there on Christmas Day, nurses serve as pseudo parents to wrap and deliver the gifts for them.

And if they are able, the children are often allowed to come into the Village and pick their own toy.

“We look forward to partnering with Snowflake Village in our future charity bass tournaments,” stated Kropp said. “What better cause could we as Teamsters be affiliated with than helping children at one of the most joyous day’s of their lives – Christmas.”

“The Joint Council thanks everyone who made a contribution to this great cause and to all the hard work that everyone put into the bass tournament to make it such a huge success,” Kropp added.

The annual tournament memorializes Dan McKay, retired Joint Council president and Teamster Local 600 president, who died in 2011.