Toys for the Corps

Ted Shaffrey

NEWPORT BEACH -- Newport Beach Yacht Club president Terrance Phillips

can’t wait for the Marine Corps to drop anchor tonight.

“I’m up to my ears in toys here,” Phillips said. “Everywhere I look, I

see toys.”

The 377 members of the yacht club have managed to collect nearly 2,000

toys for the Marine Corps’ annual Toys for Tots program, including

everything from bicycles to Lego sets.

“If you brought in a toy, you got a free drink at the bar,” Phillips

said, pointing to that temptation as the reason the drive was so

successful.

Tonight at 6:30 p.m., retired Marine Corps Brig. Gen. J.W. Hubbard and

his son, Lt. Col. Clint Hubbard, will meet Phillips, along with other

club members -- including Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackaukas --

under the club’s grand-sized outdoor Christmas tree to receive the fruit

of members’ labors.

Soldiers will load the toys onto a truck and they’ll be taken to the

Marines’ Toys For Tots warehouse in El Toro.

“We expect to have maybe 200,000 toys there,” said Scott Mather of the

Council of Orange County Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which screens

social service agencies for the Marine Corps toy program.

The toys will be given to various Orange County social service agencies,

Mather said, including boys and girls clubs, church pantries and the

Salvation Army, so needy Orange County families can begin receiving toys

as early as Monday.