It has been a decades-long tradition for the Caller-Times to help South Texas families in need during the holiday season.
This year, as hundreds of families continue to struggle financially during the coronavirus pandemic, many children are in desperate need of clothes, essential items, and most of all, toys.
By detailing the children’s lives their personalities, their dreams, their pastimes there is a hope their stories will inspire the community to invest in a better holiday for the youngest, and often the neediest, in the Coastal Bend. The donations to the Caller-Times Children’s Christmas Appeal help thousands of kids.
Once eight-year-old Janelle gets warmed up, she’s ready to act as hostess.
A tour of her family’s apartment includes introducing the family dog, Ariel. She shows off her and her mom Arlene’s artwork hanging on the walls, 3-year-old Katy’s toy trucks lined up just so, and 7-year-old Isaac’s favorite movies and apps. She pauses by the shelf near the front door, gesturing to a small memorial stone.
“That’s my baby brother’s. He died.”
Arlene and her boyfriend Kyle were doing OK at the beginning of 2020. Kyle had a steady job as a pipefitter and Arlene was due in the summer with the couple’s baby. But around the beginning of March when she was 28 weeks along and COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were beginning, she started experiencing pain.
What does Christmas mean to you?
Is it the moment you see the first snowflake on a cold winter day, seeing gifts under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, or is it the moment the person you love opens your present?
For many, Christmas can mean a lot of things. But for the children of the Caller-Times Children s Christmas Appeal, it s a day full of hope and new beginnings.
Tiffany Collie, executive director of the Odyssey After School Enrichment Program in Rockport, said Christmas is a season filled with wonder and magic for the children.
The Rockport after school program has been a participating agency for the Children s Christmas Appeal campaign for several years.
Corpus Christi Caller Times
SAN DIEGO - While most families are out shopping, wrapping gifts and making Christmas plans, Ruby and her children are grieving for two lost loved ones.
Recently, the six children lost their father to injuries he sustained in an oilfield accident several years ago. Shortly after their father s funeral their grandfather died from COVID-19.
This Christmas will be the first the family will mark without them. It s been hard. I haven t been able to work. We ve faced challenge after challenge this year alone, Their mother Ruby said. My children are having trouble after we lost my husband and father. Life changed completely. We moved back in with my mom who just got out of the hospital after getting COVID really bad. We have to care for her. She has a hard time just sitting or talking because the effects of COVID.I pray, we pray, that no one has to endure what our family has had to.
Jacob and Amanda were living a charmed life.
The married couple of five years moved to Corpus Christi in December 2019 after Jacob was promoted in the military. Amanda quickly found work in the Coastal Bend after earning her college degree a few months earlier.
The pair were finally in a good place. Both were working dream jobs and living comfortably with their four children. Everything was great, Jacob said. We were both working and we were happy with how things were.
In May, things took a turn for the worse.
The family’s caretaker informed the couple that she could no longer watch their children after receiving a job she couldn t refuse.