Sharing and Caring Spread the South Bay’s Spirit of Christmas : High School Students Learn Joy of Giving With Tower of Soup

A tower of soup cans is rising in the American studies class of teacher William R. Sanford.

By the end of last week, more than 6,000 cans of soup and other food had been used to build the tower and other stacks along the walls of Sanford’s classroom at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach.

Sanford said his 76 students plan to double that number before the school completes its annual Christmas drive for needy families. When the tower reaches the 12-foot ceiling, he said, the students will remove ceiling panels to make way for further growth.

“I get really proud of my students at Christmas,” said Sanford, who will retire in June after 30 years at Mira Costa. “They call it Operation Happiness, and it really is a wonderful experience in learning to take responsibility and help others.

“They learn that the joy of Christmas for children is in receiving, and for adults it’s giving. They get the best of both worlds.”

Beat Last Year’s Total

Most of the other classes at Mira Costa are collecting their own stocks from door-to-door solicitations in the community. The 2,000-student school’s goal is to beat last year’s total of 20,081 cans--the highest number reported for any campus in the South Bay.

Collecting canned food appears to be the most popular way for schools to participate in the spirit of Christmas giving. Many, like Inglewood High School, supplement their collections with donations of money raised through events such as school dances, bake sales and basketball games.

Some schools coordinate their Christmas giving with other community groups. Hawthorne High, for example, funnels canned goods to the Chamber of Commerce, which adds them to contributions from businesses.

Select Organization

A few schools, like those on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, have selected a particular organization to receive Christmas gifts from students and teachers. The PTA there collected canned goods, clothes and toys for the 1736 House, a shelter in Hermosa Beach for abused women and children.

For Sanford’s class at Mira Costa, the can-collecting campaign will climax Tuesday morning when, in a scene that could inspire supermarket manager nightmares, the student or group that has collected the most will be given the honor of knocking the soup can tower down.

The awesome collapse, Sanford said, is accompanied by wild cheering--and agile movements to avoid cans rolling across the floor.

“It’s a beautiful sight,” he said. “It’s like watching a waterfall in slow motion.”

Christmas Music

Then, in accordance with a tradition that dates to the 1960s, a Salvation Army brass band will arrive at the school’s central quad to play Christmas music while hundreds of students load the canned goods on waiting trucks.

“The kids get so excited, and there’s a very lively competition to see who can collect the most cans. By the time the Salvation Army comes for the pickup, we are all in a great mood for Christmas,” said Mary Ruth Scholes, a school secretary who helps coordinate the drive.

She said the canned goods will go into Christmas baskets, along with turkeys, hams and presents, for needy families and for senior citizens served by the Meals on Wheels program.

Any cans that are left over will go into the Salvation Army’s emergency food stock, Scholes said.

Mira Costa students also operate an Adopt-a-Family project during the Christmas season. Classes and campus organizations each select a family from a list provided by the Salvation Army or a church.

Personalized Gifts

The students are told only the first name, gender, age and clothes size of each family member--all they need to select personalized gifts.

“The kids go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that every member of the family gets an appropriate gift,” Sanford said.

He said the gifts usually are delivered by the Salvation Army, church groups and volunteers from the school’s custodial staff. But a few years ago, Sanford recalled, one student--who knew his adopted family through church ties--pitched in to help make the delivery.

“The boy told me later that when he was helping carry in the boxes, the mother started to cry,” Sanford said. “He cried, too, and he said he never felt so good about crying in his life.”