Local toy drive delivers the gift of love

As the holiday season approaches, the spirit of giving is in the air, which signals it’s time for Eileen’s Gift of Love toy drive — a holiday tradition for the last 34 years in Franklin Square.

Franklin Square resident Maria Sonner started the toy drive in memory of her mother, Eileen Ziegler, who died in 1988. Sonner’s mother had a love of baby toy dolls, and shopping for the dolls for her children was one of her favorite Christmas activities. “She made our Christmases spectacular, down to every little ribbon and detail,” Sonner said.

After her mother passed away, that year while Sonner was shopping, she saw a porcelain doll in Macy’s that she thought her mother would love. She brought the doll to her mother’s grave but instead of leaving it there, she consulted with her neighbor and close friend, Monsignor Fred Schaefer, who suggested that she donate the doll to a local family struggling to provide toys for their children during the holiday season.

“I came home with this toy and I was crying,” Sonner said. “He sat me down and explained to me how many families were hurting and in need.”

That year, Sonner founded Eileen’s Gift of Love toy drive, collecting and donating thousands of toys each holiday season.

“I started telling my family and friends about it and everybody wanted to contribute a toy to these families,” Sonner said. “Within three days, I had three huge bags filled with toys. And that’s when the toy drive was born, and it just has got bigger and bigger each year.”

The mission of the toy drive has always been to make sure they go directly into the hands of the parents. “I always wanted to give parents the dignity that they would be able to provide a Christmas for their child,” Sonner said.

Even though Sonner started the toy drive, it has been a group effort by her entire family, which includes her husband, Bill, who has stood alongside her every year for the toy drive, and her daughters, Rachel and Samantha. The toy drive earned even more attention after receiving media coverage for the first time last year.

Like last year, toys will be donated to the Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens and handed out at their Saint Vincent Ferrer and Saint Brendan the Navigator locations.

“It was definitely the biggest year that we’ve had,” Samantha said. “It took three vans to get all of the toys, plus cars to get all the toys down to Catholic Charities. We got toys in the thousands.”

This year, the Sonner family created an Amazon registry and those who visit the site at eileensgiftoflove.com will be taken to the Amazon website, where they can select toys to send to the Sonner family to deliver.

“We are making it so easy because now family members that have moved out of state and people that have donated for 30 years who moved can go on this registry and still send toys,” Sonner said. “Since last year, we have connected with old friends and people who live in different states who were saying they’d love to donate and how they remember my mother. It was amazing.”

Since the toy drive was started in 1989 — before Sonner’s children were born and while Samantha never got to meet her grandmother — the tradition has kept her spirit alive.

“Because the toy drive was named after her, people would tell stories about her at the toy drive and, growing up as a kid, she was associated with giving and Christmas,” Samantha said. “All my cousins and I grew up doing the drive and it’s probably the first thing that taught us about giving back to other people.”

Even though Samantha, 29, lives in Florida, she returns home annually to help with the toy drive. She recalls carrying toys into church basements and enjoying hot chocolate when she was younger.

“This has been my favorite event of the holidays since I was five years old,” she said. “It is a whole event when the toys get picked up and when we deliver them. Every member of our family and friends all (get) together for that day, and that’s probably the one day of the holiday season that we actually got everybody together in the same room. To me, the toy drive has always been Christmas.”

Sonner is scheduled to speak at Morton Civic Association’s annual holiday tree lighting on Dec. 10, where the civic group will request toy donations. The Sonner family has already received hundreds of toys for the occasion. While family members are asking that all the toys be given to them by the tree lighting, they are collecting toys throughout the year for the annual drive, which Sonner said her mother could never have imagined.

“I think she would be blown away,” Sonner said. “My parents instilled rich traditions, faith, family and giving back. It wouldn’t be out of her realm that we would do something loving and caring, but she would have never expected it to be so huge of a toy drive.

“Sometimes you get gifts in life you’re not expecting, and I think the toy drive was a gift to help me with my grief,” she added.