The scene may have been different, but the spirit was exactly the same. Just ask Santa Claus, merrily boogieing to thumping dance tunes and schmoozing his way down the line of volunteers in cars who waited on Saturday morning, distantly and patiently, for boxes of brand new bicycle parts to assemble and pass along.
“We are so proud to take part in something that helps our community,” said Santa, who admitted that he was really Jerry Jones, and that the young elves accompanying him were his granddaughter, Delaney Bayliss, and family friend Dylan Johnson.
“I’ve been Santa forever,” said Jones, who loves adding seasonal cheer to charity projects from inside his red suit and fake beard. This year, Jones’ long white beard concealed a face mask.
The assembled bikes, and accompanying helmets, will wind up with families who can’t afford this basic bit of childhood joy. An annual bike-build event normally draws hundreds of volunteers to a huge downtown warehouse for a fun, slightly crowded festival of on-site assembly — but this year, sponsor Waste Connections had to come up with a new plan that avoided all that togetherness.
What shaped up was a “pickup parade,” said Waste Connections community affairs director Cyndy Holloway, with cars and trucks lined up in the parking lot of Barberton trucking company Taylor Transport. They eased inside the Taylor warehouse, got loaded up with boxes of bikes, enjoyed free coffee, treats, music and Santa’s dance performance, and then drove out the other side.
All the bikes will get assembled at home by volunteering families, or at local businesses like Portland’s Belfour Property Restoration, which took 15 bikes to its warehouse for assembly by employees. Then they’ll get returned for distribution to local charities like Santa’s Posse, a Clark County Sheriff’s Office effort to bring toys and food to needy families during the holidays.
Preparing for the bike build during this weird pandemic year was a significant challenge, Holloway said. Last year, she said, approximately 200 volunteers built precisely 823 bikes on-site; this year a smaller group of volunteers had to preregister and Holloway started hunting for bikes as early as July. But bikes have been a hot commodity all year, and even with all that lead time, Holloway was only able to secure just under 400 bikes by build day, she said.
“It’s still a party, though,” Holloway added, directing the loading-up labors of about 25 Waste Connections and Taylor employees from beneath a string of lit-up Christmas lights atop her head.
Donations are still being taken by the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington; visit https://www.cfsww.org/donate and select the J. Scott Campbell Foundation. Bike Clark County, a grassroots nonprofit, will continue distributing late-arriving bikes to needy families next year.
J. Scott Campbell, spokesman for the local office of Waste Connections and a respected civic leader in Clark County, was the founder of the bike build, which was named in his honor after he died in 2017.
“It’s a family tradition. We’ve been doing it since it started,” said Larry Kingsella, who had the honor — along with his daughter, Belen — of being at the head of the line. They were taking six bikes back to Kingsella’s business, Desi Telephone Labels, to assemble there along with the rest of the family, he said.
“We didn’t have a giving family tradition yet,” Kingsella said. “Now we know most of the people who do this and it feels like family. So this is a bit of a family reunion. It’s not quite the same as usual, but it’s close.”
