By Jackie Ayres
Twenty-eight inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Beckley are spending 35 hours per week crafting homemade wooden toys for Mac’s Toy Fund, which will be dispersed to underprivileged children next Saturday.
As he carefully crafted a rocking horse, inmate Dean Williams, 53, of Indiana, said, “I have six kids and grandkids, so this is one way of doing things for people on the outside.”
Like many of the inmates, Williams was a professional contractor and woodworker prior to being incarcerated.
“We kind of help each other develop skills to make the toys,” Williams said.
With a goal of making 275 toys for the fund, the men are hand-crafting doll houses, table and chair sets, rocking horses and chairs, mini-toolboxes complete with tools, and picnic tables for the children.
Steve Satcher of Washington, D.C. said he volunteers for the Toy Fund because he has kids himself and just, “loves kids period.”
Satcher, who possesses a clear gift for woodworking, made three round specialty tables in different shades of wood, and designed mini-tool boxes with multi-color tools — a new idea he thought of — for this year’s toy giveaway.
“It’s for the kids ... putting a smile on somebody’s face,” he said.
Making the toys allows Satcher “to give back,” which he says you don’t typically get a chance to do when doing time on the inside.
He says he and his fellow inmates are given, “two hours in the morning” and “two or three hours in the evening” to make the toys.
Satcher, who serves as a tutor of carpentry, electrical wiring and blueprint reading in the prison, is also teaching his fellow inmates how to make cabinets and furniture.
Prison officials say the project is an honest way of allowing the inmates to give back to the community, while being incarcerated.
Watching the guys work, an obvious question had to be asked — whether the tools used in the fairly large shop pose a safety issue.
The inmates vo-tech instructor, who chose to leave his name unpublished, said hammers, nails and sharp blades in the shop don’t concern him.
“This is the best place to do work. These guys stay busy and — I’ve been here for nine years, and we haven’t even had a fight.”
This is just like a vo-tech program on the street, “except they don’t get to go home at 4 o’ clock,” said the instructor.
The instructor says other than a couple guys “knicking their fingers on a table saw here and there,” the guys do a great job making the toys.
He says the inmates love volunteering for Mac’s so much, that every year, sometime around July, they start “aggravating” him about helping with the fund again.
“These guys want to do this. They work somewhere else and volunteer on their time off to work on the toys,” said the instructor.
Acting warden Ray Ormond said, “The law and policies require that — we cannot make them come down here and we can’t pay them for this because this is a community service project. It’s volunteer only. There’s no incentive to them other than the fact that they know they’re giving back.”
Mac’s Treasurer Sherrie Hunter and President Dawn Dayton visited the prison with a Register-Herald reporter and photographer, to see the progress the inmates we’re making on the toys.
“Not everything bad happens when you come into a locked facility. This is rehabilitation at it’s best happening right here,” said Hunter.
“When you come into this kind of facility, to see cooperation and rehabilitation — to think, one person started the toy fund during the Depression, and his legacy is still living on. This has been eye opening to me.”
Hunter says the toys the inmates are making will become “heirloom” gifts that will be passed down for many generations. She said these toys are, “the type of gift that keeps on giving.”
Dayton said she was extremely pleased with the inmates’ work and noted a sense of “pride” in their eyes as they worked.
“What these men do is absolutely awesome, as good as any I've seen anywhere. When you talk to them about their work, you can see the pride in their eyes. And that is as it should be.”
Dayton says the pride would be even greater if the inmates could see how eager people are to have one of their handmade pieces.
“The pieces just fly out the door,” Dayton said of the wooden gifts the inmates make every year.
“I hope that on our visit here we have been able to convey to them just how special their work is."
The toy fund paid for all the materials the prison needed to make the toys.
Mac’s Toy Fund donations can be mailed to: Mac’s Toy Fund, P.O. Box 2398, Beckley, WV 25802
— E-mail: jayres@register-herald.com
