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Tommy Toy provides gifts to children who would receive few or no toys during the holidays. Families with children between the ages of 0-12 years of age residing in New London or Windham County are eligible to register for the program. There are many ways to help by donating, volunteering, running a toy drive, or holding a benefit event during Christmas in July.
Check back for details to register for 2025.
Families can register through approved registration sites listed below. Tommy Toy is for with children between the ages of 0-12 years of age residing in New London or Windham County.
Most sites offer registration by appointment or on a walk-in basis. Please contact an agency directly regarding their specific registration procedures. Families must register in advance.
Stay tuned for details about volunteer opportunities in 2025.
We will be celebrating Christmas in July again in 2025, and we encourage individuals, businesses, and organizations to run a toy drive and/or raise funds for Tommy Toy during that time.
Stay tuned for more information!
There are no planned events at this time.
Stay tuned for details about Gift Pick-up.
It began with a letter in 1974.
In the letter, a young girl said she had overheard her mother telling a friend she didn’t have the money to buy presents for her two children for Christmas that year. A single parent, the woman said her income would only provide for the essentials — rent, utilities and food for her and the two children — but not Christmas gifts.
“I’m old enough to understand,” the girl wrote. “But my little brother, Tommy, won’t understand why Santa Claus stopped at all his friends’ houses, but not at our house. Maybe, there’s someone out there who could afford to provide a toy or two for my little brother.”
The letter was forwarded to then-Metropolitan Editor Greg LaFreniere, who decided to write a story about the girl’s request. LaFreniere’s story appeared on page one of the next day’s Norwich Bulletin.
“I guess I hoped there would be a few people in our readership who still held the spirit of that editorial and who would find it in their hearts to help keep Tommy’s belief in Santa Claus strong,” LaFreniere would say later.
The next day, the newsroom was stacked with toys for Tommy. There were so many donations, that armloads were brought to dozens of families in New London and Windham counties.
The Tommy Toy Fund's reach has expanded greatly since its humble beginnings in 1974. It could have been a one-time event, but the next year Bulletin readers called to ask if the paper was going to have another toy drive. Those readers fueled a decades-long tradition that now provides gifts to thousands of families across the region every December.
In the years after that fateful letter was received, the Tommy Toy Fund enlisted United Way of Southeastern Connecticut to partner, mobilizing volunteers and a more solid infrastructure that the effort requires.
Today, the program is run and operated by United Way of Southeastern Connecticut with the partnership of many other groups, including the three distribution sites in Norwich, New London, and Dayville.