A Christmas Doll : At 84, She Turns Out Exquisite Toys for Needy Children

There was never a doll beneath the Christmas tree when Myrtle Reynolds was a little girl. Her family was too poor to buy her one.

Eighty years later, the Long Beach woman works night and day to make up for that misfortune.

From January to November, Reynolds uses an ancient sewing machine to stitch together happy-faced rag dolls by the dozen. Each is given a distinctive personality and a name. And at Christmastime, each is given away.

The dolls find their way to children who are poor, disabled or retarded. They are matched up with youngsters deemed especially deserving by several Long Beach-area charities.

The confidentiality of that distribution process means that Reynolds does not get to meet the delighted new owners of her dolls.

“After the dolls leave me, I never see them again,” said Reynolds, 84. “So I talk to them and give them a kiss and tell them to be good girls.”

The organizations that get to distribute Reynolds’ gifts praise her for their good fortune. Last week they picked up the last of this year’s 144 dolls.

“Her dolls are so beautiful and so well-made,” said Elsye Akard of the Salvation Army office in Long Beach. “We would never be able to buy dolls of that quality for needy people here.”

Evelyn duPont, founder of a therapy program called California Pools for the Handicapped, has helped distribute Reynolds’ handiwork for 10 years. “Each of her dolls is a masterpiece,” duPont said.

“The bulk of our children are below poverty level or developmentally disabled or abused. The dolls mean so much to them, particularly at this time of year. The children clutch the rag dolls like they are real babies.”

Retarded youngsters who receive the dolls each year through the Mental Health Assn. of Los Angeles County are told how the stuffed toys were personally handcrafted--and how Reynolds herself is disabled with crippling osteoporosis.

The disease causes bone deterioration and has affected Reynolds’ jaw. When the pain awakens her at night, she gets up and works at her 45-year-old Sears sewing machine until she is too exhausted to continue.

“She makes special dolls for children who are disabled,” said Joannie Baracz, a regional director at the Mental Health Assn.’s Long Beach office. “They’ll have cloth eyes and Velcro on their backs so they can be dressed and undressed. She goes over and over each one with her hands and makes sure she hasn’t left any needles or pins in it.”

Long Beach charity workers say Reynolds has never slowed her pace--even one year when she had eye surgery and couldn’t see well enough to sew the detailed faces on her rag dolls. They say Reynolds temporarily turned to making teddy bears when that happened.

By December, the tiny bungalow that Reynolds and her husband, Ormond, built in 1945 is stuffed with rag dolls ready to become Christmas gifts. The dolls cover tables and couches. “We have to bring out folding chairs if we have guests,” said Ormond, 89, a retired heavy equipment operator.

Reynolds said she sells a few dolls each year to help pay for the lace, gingham and foam stuffing that goes into her creations. She said she plans to keep up her work as long as she is able.

“I cried many a night when I was a girl,” she said. “Christmas would come along and there would be nothing under the tree. I don’t want that to happen to other children.”