Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LOW Parsons Foundation.

We're continuing the holiday celebration on Our Place Our Time.

Join us next as we honor two people who perform acts of charity year round.

We'll also look at Christmas from a child's perspective and celebrate a West African festival of the season.

All the best of the holiday season to you and thank you for joining us for Our Place Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

We have four stories to tell you, each offering a different perspective on this time of year when we give thanks and gifts to those people that we love and respect.

We begin with the story of a retired Navy man who lives in Virginia Beach, a man who makes toys the year round, which the social agencies distribute to needy children this time of year.

Sydney Jones tells our Holly O'Neill that his health isn't what it used to be, but that he has no intention of stopping now the spreading of Christmas joy.

It is a common scene during the holidays.

People searching for that perfect gift for their loved ones, especially presents for children.

The kind that will create the excitement and sparkle only a child feels opening toys on Christmas morning, which they believe that jolly man who comes in through the chimney brought just for them.

Hi, Christine.

Yeah, this is Joyce Harrison from Social Services Holiday Project.

How you doing today?

Well, even Santa's resources do fall short at times, but he certainly has inspired some special helpers to try and fill in the gaps.

The holiday project at Virginia Beach's Department of Social Services provides for families during the season of giving.

The project distributes donations of food and special presents for children and it is with a very special spirit that one such donation has come here.

We had a special donor, a Mr.

Jones.

He began making his toys last Christmas for this year.

So he called me during the summer months and wanted to let us know that he was still thinking about us and he was making toys during the summer months for Christmas.

Joyce Harrison, the coordinator for Holiday Project says Mr.

Jones came to them just in time.

He was an answer to a prayer, especially when we had very little toys.

So he called up and said, you know, "Do you have a need for toys?"

And I was like, "What?

Do we have a need for toys?"

So he immediately came over with these handmade toys and as soon as he came with them, we started giving them out.

This mother is choosing toys to give to her daughter for Christmas.

Amid the dolls and games and stuffed animals she finds these handmade wooden trains and rocking horses.

Jessica, choo-choo train.

Well, I bet a lot of work gets into this.

And a lot did go into the train as well as all the other toys on the shelf.

Meet Joyce Harrison's answer to a prayer.

Mr.

Sidney Jones.

And I, I know of software I get when you come to kids.

Having four of my own and seven grandkids.

And I like to have them have something.

I just can't see them having nothing in a school enough, but it's not their fault.

So I went ahead and called up Mr.

Johnson and the Joyce and asked if they wanted some more toys this Christmas.

He says, "Yes, we'll take all your card."

Well, I started in July.

And since July, Mr.

Jones has delivered 91 toys to social services and he doesn't plan to stop there.

I'm going to have more.

I said, "I'm not done yet."

I said, "The good Lord let me.

I'm going to have more."

A retired Navy radio man and manager for a toy distributor, Mr.

Jones, spends much of his time woodworking in the garage of his Virginia Beach home.

Mr.

Jones suffered his first heart attack when he was in his late 40s.

He has since incurred further heart and lung problems.

At 62 years old, Mr.

Jones is battling cancer, receiving radiation treatments even now.

His heart and lung problems cause him to use oxygen he can take through this extended tube.

However, his heart certainly doesn't have any trouble when it comes to helping out others.

Come Christmas morning, I can just picture it in my mind the little youngest on that tree enthusiast.

I bought a little toy because I know how my children used to act when he was small.

And that's just what got Mr.

Jones started in his hobby.

His first effort about eight years ago were dollhouses for his granddaughters.

He then continued making other toys as he thought of new ideas and patterns.

Those he donated to Navy families.

Within the last few years, he's been giving them to Virginia Beach families.

People have helped us.

We were down and out and a lot of neighbors and friends came and helped us.

I always said, "When he did, I'm going to, I'll pay some of these people back."

And this time with my way of paying back, he knows upstairs.

Through the years, Mr.

Jones' garage has truly turned into a mini workshop.

We came back down here in 83 and that's when I had a garage and that's when I really got into it.

Then I started buying saws and routers and sanders and the children every Christmas give me another tool to work with.

Then he said, "Dad, you can't work out in the wintertime."

He got me a stove.

So that's about pretty good right now.

That could about pretty good.

Put some wheels on that and put a little eye in here and a little pool toy.

And some little girl boy might like it.

That's how Mr.

Jones has finished almost 900 toys in the last eight years.

But this Christmas, Mr.

Jones says he doesn't want any new tools.

My doctors always said, "Don't ever quit because what you're doing is keeping you going. "

He says, "You got a will to live if we ain't never seen a guy like you that come in here as bad as you are smiling and walk out smiling.

Don't quit.

No, no, I just plain it.

It's just a, a wonderful feeling.

Just a wonderful feeling.

I don't know how, just his look in somebody's eyes and in my heart and knowing that gee whiz I help somebody.

Thank You very Much.

Merry Christmas to you.

In as in a sense of way I am, Zana glad to them.

I was going to let my beard go in so easy too, but I couldn't stand it because it was all white.

And I couldn't stand the itchy.

Last month, Sidney Jones had a special day proclaimed in his honor in the city of Virginia Beach.

And we though the city might like to consider a special day in honor of the subject of our next story.

For more than a decade, Alice Taylor has directed a program in Virginia Beach and Norfolk that helps needy people who for one reason or another have been denied help elsewhere.

The yecumenical St.

Columba ministry that she directs helps the poor, the homeless and the chronically unemployed.

Tim Morton filed this story.

There was a time when I didn't know who I was.

I didn't know what this world was about, what this universe was about.

And I'm constantly reminded how great God's love is and how great God's forgiveness is.

I see it for myself as well as the people that we minister to.

It gives me hope that St.

Columba Ministries does two things.

We touch the people on the street.

We touch the poverty level people, but we go into the church and we have an opportunity to show the church what their call is.

And the call is not to put up a barrier.

Their call is to take down the barriers.

And that's scriptural.

The gates of hell shall not prevail.

I had a religious experience and I felt that, that my life prior to the religious experience had built up to something.

And it turned out to be helping other people through many of the things that I had been through as a child and as a young adult.

We help the very, very poor, those persons who have no income at all.

Some of our folks out on the street cannot get general relief.

They are not employable and in order to get general relief you have to be looking for a job or have some kind of a disability that prevents you temporarily from getting a job.

But if you're chronic homeless, chronically unemployed these are the folks that we help because they can't get any kind of government help.

Okay.

Okay.

So, okay.

So basically what you're needing is you need to have money for the, for the deposit to move into an apartment and for the first month's rent.

We have emergency assistance, financial emergency assistance that touches just about every need financial need that a family would have.

If somebody's in jail, we will go bail for a person if we know the family well enough.

We will pay for telephone bills if there is somebody who is handicapped in the home and they absolutely need a telephone.

We pay electricity, gas bills, water bills, sewage bills.

We pay for medicine, we'll buy medicine.

Then we have food and we always have food.

We go out to the churches and churches are kind enough to collect food once a month and distribute, donate it to us and we distribute it to needy families.

We've seen a rise in that.

It used to be an average of 35 families a month and now we're up to 42 families a month.

We go into the court system.

Many people have been abused or, or feel abused by the system and they won't stand up for their rights.

We don't go in and speak for them.

It's amazing how strong a person will feel about themselves and their situation if we walk into the court with them and just stand as a friend of the court with them so they can speak for their own needs.

That's the advocacy that we do.

It's direct direct advocacy.

I suppose it was well more than 10 years ago.

I'm not quite sure just when it was.

But she was at, at St.

Columba Church at that point.

And I was aware of what she was doing there and was very interested.

The first word that comes to my mind is unselfish.

Alice is probably the most unselfish person you will ever meet in your entire life.

She's a woman who gave up a middle class existence to live amongst the people that she felt she could help the most.

Well, I'm sure that it's, it's a, it's a living out of her faith.

And really as we approach the Christmas season the real meaning of this Christmas season is the creator identifying with his creation humanity.

I think Alice identifies with those that she, with whom she works.

And as a result they know they're accepted by her.

But as far as what really motivates her, it's that kind of faith.

It's it's following the master.

I'll be harsh.

Greed is probably the number one source for homelessness.

When I first came to Norfolk, there was a real ghetto in the city of Norfolk.

And I was angry when I saw the ghetto and I though there's some slum lord out there really making bucks.

And I wanted that destroyed and I wanted decent housing for those folks.

Well, Norfolk has developed decent housing, but it isn't for those folks.

And now I'm beginning to believe that there is a reason to have slumlords.

Everybody has to have a roof over their head.

You Know, I'm trying, it seems like I've always known her.

I can't really recall if meeting her in Norfolk and meetings on the Hampton Rose Housing Coalition was the first time that I met her.

I just remember being struck by her fervor.

She's a very dedicated very intense person.

And yet she has a great sense of humor.

I mean we can be talking about a, a, just a devastatingly serious issue and she'll laugh.

I choose to live at a simple life in a simple lifestyle.

Not so, not so grand as many people who choose simple lifestyles.

I own my own home and I have a nice car and I live in a fairly decent neighborhood in Virginia Beach.

But six months out of the year I choose to live in the shelter.

And and that is because I want folks to know that they have choices and that I choose to find out who they are and why they're there and to have a better understanding of them so that I can teach other people not to be afraid.

It also gives them comfort and, and to know, you know, I'll have questions many, many times, you know, why do you go into shelter and sleep on the floor every night?

Well, my flippant answer is it's good for my back, but the real answer is that I should not be apart from the people that we serve.

We can stay here approximately 45 days given your case scenario and things of that nature as long as you're looking for employment and things of that nature.

Baby's name's Joseph Edward.

I've been here one week and I don't really know where I'm going to go, where I'll be in office somewhere.

I plan to go to school, go back to school and get my high school diploma.

And then I might go to college.

Take up accounting.

Try to get me a career.

If you don't have nowhere to go or you know, your family can't put up, you know, has somewhere for you to stay or you just don't have nowhere to go right offhand, you know, they'll provide a place for you until you can go find work again or they can find you somewhere to go.

It's different situations for everybody.

We wanted to try to capture the feeling of wonder a child feels at this time of year.

Certainly this is a time when we remember and celebrate childhood.

Tammy Thornton produced this essay that gives a child's perspective of Christmas.

$1, $2, $3, $4.

At this time of year, many African Americans begin the observance of a seven-day long celebration, which has its roots in a West African harvest festival.

Kwanzaa, as the celebration is called, shares ceremonial aspects with Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas.

Kim Simon Fink visited a Kwanzaa festival in Virginia Beach.

Africa, the ancestral homeland to black Americans.

It seems a far cry from the suburban Virginia Beach neighborhood.

Gone are so many of the customary tribal rituals.

The gathering of the harvest, for example, is of little import to black Americans who need only drive as far as their local supermarket.

As Americans, it is important to remember our rich heritage and to learn from the past.

For seven days from December 26th to January 1st, Afro-Americans nationwide will honor their cultural past through the seasonal celebration of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa celebrations are usually observed at home.

It is a time to gather with family and friends.

Reverend Samuel Varner and his wife Ruth welcome their guests in Swahili.

Patterned after traditional African harvest celebrations, Kwanzaa or a festival of first fruits was created in America in 1966 by Dr.

Marlana Ron Kuringa.

His intention to bolster black pride.

Nakuza Saba are the seven principles on which Kwanzaa was founded.

Seven principles that are responsible for a successful harvest of any kind, whether it be a literary work, raising a family or harvesting a field of produce.

There are principles such as umoja, Swahili for unity, urnia, purpose, principles that are vital in building strong and wholesome communities.

Like most holidays, there are ceremonies.

The observance of kwanza begins with the libation blessings.

We come in and the first thing we do to start our kwanza celebration is we ask the oldest person in the house for permission to carry on with the celebration.

And if they give us permission by nodding the head or standing, then we honor the ancestors by dropping a libation on the floor so that the ancestors will be connected with us with our celebration.

We also make praises to the elderly people in the house which is man and woman.

Omo is children.

And we make praises to the children because the children are the ones that carry on these traditions as we move off the scene, when we join our ancestors.

In this harvest celebration, children are considered the finest fruits.

At our kwanza celebration, we always have corn and this, each ear of the corn represents the fact that this corn is going to be able to reproduce itself.

We bring our children into our kwanza celebration with the same idea that they're going to reproduce us and they're going to carry on the traditions of our ancestors.

Our ancestor was very, very concerned about preserving the Athricanisms that we could preserve in this country and we have preserved them in this ceremony of, and in this celebration of Kwanzaa.

On each of the seven days, a candle representing one of the Naguzo Saba principles is lit and placed in the canara, a candelabra symbolizing the origin of the black people.

The principles are recited by the elders for the children in a somber ceremony.

Self-determination.

To define, name, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves instead of being defined, named, created for and spoken for.

Fourth principle, Bujamar, collective economics to build and maintain our own businesses and profit from them together.

The lighting of the Kanara is a time to reflect on cooperative family and social values.

Solidarity through the principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

Many times our society has said to us that as black people you cannot create.

We must create for you.

And we want the children to know that.

So we light these candles.

We help the children to realize that they can define their own selves.

They can name themselves and they can create for themselves.

Of course, sobering lessons can be reinforced with an intoxicating mix of song and dance.

Drums are recognized as the heartbeat of the African.

When the drums speak, the community gathers.

Their polyrhythmic feat translates into a harmonic blend of unity.

And what would a harvest festival be without sharing the fruits of its labor?

On the seventh day, there is the caramel or feast.

During the feast, the seventh principal Amani, where faith is discussed.

The children reflect on their year's achievements and are later rewarded for their deeds with Zawati homemade gifts.

After the meal, poems and stories are told, fashioned after the tradition of sharing oral histories.

Tubman to free up people from the danger.

Gave a heavenly voice to Marian Anderson.

Taught Billie Holiday to sing away her pain.

Put the will to survive in the ghetto.

Delivered babies in the early morning, not once did I complain.

I put the pin in the hand of Langston Hughes and made him sit down to write.

Put the low down blues in the heart of Hootie Leadbelly caused Sugar Ray Leonard to fight.

Finally, Arambe.

Let's pull together.

A closing toast is delivered to ancestors and a pledge is made for continued progress and unity.

This is our alarm clock to remind us it's time for us to work.

It's not an end, a year-end celebration.

It's beginning of work.

And we must work all year round for the betterment of our people.

Kwanzaa, a time for family and friends.

A festival of lights, the exchange of gifts.

Ceremony is not too far afield from the seasonal celebration of Christmas and Hanukkah, though there is no religious intent.

The celebration of Naguzo Saba, the seven principles, is distinctly cultural.

The first ethnic Afro-American celebration in the United States.

On the next edition of Our Place, Our Time, we're going to look at mortuary art as we take a stroll through a Victorian cemetery in Portsmouth that's just achieved landmark status.

And then we're going to look at a Norfolk house that's been frozen in time and visit a jolly Englishman who's a master builder of harpsaccords.

Our very best holiday wishes to you and thank you for joining us for Our Place Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

Partial funding for Our Place Our Time has been made possible by the Arts Commission of the City of Chesapeake with additional support from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Virginia Beach, Newport News, Norfolk, Hampton and Williamsburg.

Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison J and LOW Parsons Foundation.