Saturday at 10 a.m., the Institute of Applied Technology at Fort Hays State University and volunteers will build some 200 wooden cars to be given to area youth at the annual Fred P. Ruda Toys for Tots Day in Davis Hall on the FHSU campus.<\/p>\n
Volunteers are encouraged to join the faculty and students of the Institute of Applied Technology at FHSU in assembling the cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids from eight to 80 are invited,\u201d said Duane Renfrow, event director and associate professor in the Institute of Applied Technology.<\/p>\n
60 to 65 volunteers are needed to complete the job in an estimated two hours and volunteers may come and go as they please, according to Renfrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a good way for the community of all ages to come together for a short time and have the feeling of giving back to the community in the Christmas season. It is a giving of ourselves,\u201d Renfrow said.<\/p>\n
The more hazardous jobs will be completed by the faculty and students, but there will also be an abundance of opportunities for others to help, no matter their skill level with woodworking, according to Renfrow.<\/p>\n
Children under the age of 12 need to be accompanied by an adult.<\/p>\n
Once the toys are completed, they will be given to the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program for distribution within Ellis County. The mission of the Toys for Tots Program is to collect new toys to be distributed as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children.<\/p>\n
Toys for Tots was approved as an official activity of the U.S. Marine Corps in 1995, and by 1996 it had expanded to all 50 states. \u00a0More information about Toys for Tots can be obtained at their website, toysfortots.org.<\/p>\n
The Toys for Tots Day was named in honor of Fred P. Ruda. Ruda was chair of the Technology Studies Department at FHSU until his death in 2012. He was in his thirty-ninth year of teaching at FHSU and had been department chair for 33 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was really the main influence in this project. It was his baby. He really felt like this was something we needed to do, so we followed along with that. \u00a0With his excitement and dedication to this project, we decided to name it in his honor,” Renfrow said, referring to Ruda.<\/p>\n
This is the twenty-fifth year for the Toys for Tots Day at FHSU. \u201cFor the 25th<\/sup> year anniversary, the original race car of the first year is being reproduced,\u201d Renfrow said, with small safety modifications.<\/p>\n Each year a different toy design is made. Past toys have included cars, segmented snakes, tractors, a bug box on wheels, and double-jointed wiener dogs with a pull string.<\/p>\n \u201cI still think a wooden toy can hold meaning to kids, even without buttons or being able to fight a war with it. Sometimes simple is still good,\u201d Renfrow said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday at 10 a.m., the Institute of Applied Technology at Fort Hays State University and volunteers will build some 200 wooden cars to be given… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3398],"tags":[678,2084,4502,4503,4501,4504],"class_list":["post-17308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-news","tag-christmas","tag-duane-renfrow","tag-fred-p-ruda","tag-institute-of-applied-technology","tag-toys-for-tots","tag-u-s-marine-corps"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17308"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17319,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17308\/revisions\/17319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}