The White River Valley Herald

As War Rampages, Holiday Joy Bound for Myrhorod

Bethany Church Ships Presents To Displaced Kids in Ukraine


David Atkinson joins other volunteers Friday at Bethany Church in loading boxes full of toys to be delivered to Randolph’s sister city in Ukraine for the holidays. (Herald / Kyan Smith)

David Atkinson joins other volunteers Friday at Bethany Church in loading boxes full of toys to be delivered to Randolph’s sister city in Ukraine for the holidays. (Herald / Kyan Smith)

Randolph’s Bethany Church was abuzz Friday afternoon with more than 20 volunteers on site to help make for happier holidays in Ukraine.

Members of the church organized a toy drive to collect donations which have now begun the trip to Randolph’s sister city in Myrhorod, Ukraine, a connection formed in the 1980s.

According to Lee Khan, who organized the effort, support has been overwhelming. Businesses made contributions and scores of church and community members spent time and money shopping for presents that could be sent out to children aged 1-16.

Myrhorod is off the beaten path for military operations, so has been largely spared from Russian aggression, Khan said. That means, she added, that the city of about 40,000 has taken in roughly 20,000 people displaced by bombings in other parts of the country. It’s estimated that about 5,000 of those refugees are children.

Khan said that Vermont Teddybear had contributed a dozen special stuffed bears to the total and Cabot Hosiery had donated 136 pairs of Darn Tough socks.

One of the big refrains she said she’d heard from volunteers is how much they’d enjoyed themselves contributing.

“You’d get these big, retired guys bringing in bags full of presents and they’d say ‘I had so much fun shopping for toys!’”

Sue Schoolcraft, she added, donated her very impressive doll collection to the effort.

A gaggle of kids helped count up all of the gifts before they were placed in boxes and Khan enthusiastically announced that the group had managed to collect 1,240 gifts to be given out to the Ukrainian children.

The Ukraine Connection

Randolph came to be a sister city with Myrhorod thanks to interest from Gwen Hallsmith, the town manager at the time. Anne Silloway picked up the ball and thought it would be a great idea if Randolph’s Rotary Club sponsored the creation of a new Rotary Club in Myrhorod.

What followed were several trips back and forth, establishing friendships.

In the 21st century, the relationship faded, but was rekindled when Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

At 94, Irene Schaeffer, who visited Ukraine in 2003 with the Randolph Rotary Club, was on hand to help out Friday.

She noted that Silloway, from her home in Florida, had called when the Russian invasion began and said that she had kept in touch all these years with Alex Riepen, the interpreter who had accompanied the Rotary contingent through Ukraine.

According to Schaeffer, Riepen was supporting two additional families who were displaced by the war as well as his own and she and Silloway began sending money to try to ease the burden.

That initial good will grew into a Bethany Church project, also spear-headed by Khan, to ship supplies to Myrhorod over the summer.

As Friday afternoon arrived, volunteers began packing boxes, which had been festively decorated earlier in the day by a contingent of home school students.

Khan pointed out some Cyrillic writing on the side of one box and said that a girl named Izzy O’Brien had used a phone to lookup how to write “You are loved” in Ukrainian.

Schaeffer noted that the group had spoken with Riepen via Zoom earlier in the day until his power cut out and they’d been able to show him all of the toys that were collected.

“When we showed Alex” the Ukrainian writing on the boxes, “he said ‘she’s got it perfectly right!’”

Logistics

Bethany’s last shipment to Ukraine went by cargo ship due to the weight and it arrived in Myrhorod after a round-about adventure in late July.

Time is of the essence to get toys to Myrhorod ahead of the holidays. Ukraine, like many places in Europe, celebrates St. Nicholas Day, which is on December 6 this year, so this time around, the festive cargo will be sent by air freight via Meest Courier Service, which specializes in such international shipments.

A truck, contributed by Rain or Shine Tent Company, left Randolph to take the shipment to Newark over the weekend. From there, the boxes will be flown to Hamburg, Germany and then finally driven across Poland and into Lviv, Ukraine, and finally 500 miles across the country to the ultimate destination in Myrhorod, Khan said.