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CHRISTMAS
Happy surprise to a needy Chicago family was the refrigerator Don presented in the Reverse Giveaway.
Major Robert Hoggard and Kay watch Don fasten the name plate to room the McNeills furnished at a hospital.
in the middle of the summer.
Again, I attribute it all to Don's feeling about lost birthdays. When, during the war, servicemen mourned the Christmases spent in combat, Don decided to do something about it, and that something was labeled the Breakfast Club's Christmas in July.
It took a little doing, for decorations at that season are packed in warehouses, and a tree had to be specially cut and trucked to Chicago. Yet it was worth the effort, I realized as I sat at home listening to the carols, hearing about the brightly bedecked tree, and feeling like the servicemen guests and the rest of the audience that the Christmas spirit ought not be restricted to one day in the year.
Its finish, however, was unlike any other Christmas broadcast. Don arrived home late that afternoon, tired and sunburned." "Where in the world have you been?" I asked.
Don grinned. "When the show was over, we went down to the beach to cool off. Santa Claus swapped his coat for a red bathing suit, but he kept on his whiskers."
It took two more special Breakfast Club broadcasts to bring a happy ending to Don's and my Christmasbirthday frustration.
The first occurred when a downstate Illinois woman wrote complaining that Don was, to say the least, "frugal". While other radio shows were showering fortunes in gifts, the Breakfast Club didn!t give away so much as a cup of coffee.
Don and the rest of the staff thought it over. Giveaway shows were sweeping the country. Perhaps he was missing the boat. They decided to ask you people in the audience what you thought about it.
You told them. More than fifty thousand of you wrote that you didn't want washing machines, furniture or fur coats. All you wanted was just what you had been getting, good old Breakfast Club corn, complete with gags, puns, audience interviews, Sam Cowling, Aunt Fanny and all the rest of the gang.
You set an idea cooking. How, the people around the microphone wondered, would you Breakfast Clubbers like to do the giving?
That's what produced the Reverse Giveaway, when, to gain admission to the studio, visitors had to bring Don a useful gift. The response was overwhelming. Twice as many persons as could get into the studio jammed the doors.
Sponsors, staff, cast and orchestra added to the loot, and when completed, the mountain of presents ranged from enough roofing to cover a house down to handmade sewing kits.
We've always wished all of you could have seen what happened when those presents reached famines which really needed them. The Cook County Welfare Board undertook the distribution, and the cast went along with the truck to deliver some of the major items. Don spoke for the people who received them as well as from his own heart when he thanked you, saying, "Nothing
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