Operation St. Nick sure has grown from raising $895 in 1983 from auctioning off Cabbage Patch Dolls: In 2023, the 41st annual radio auction raised $150,000, all of which goes towards making the best Christmas possible for 64 local families.

Founder Joe Schmitz said the auction proceeds provide 163 children with $250 worth of presents that Santa will bring on Christmas morning. It also provides the parents with $300 worth of groceries and a $1,000 voucher that can be used either on their electric bill or their gas bill. In total, Operation St. Nick has spent over $120,000 on Christmas.

“We started with just one basket of food for $250 for one family in 1979,” Schmitz said. “Where we’ve come to today is amazing, and it’s because of the generosity of the people in Grundy County.”

Schmitz said $82,000 came just in the mail from people wishing to donate instead of buying anything.

Operation St. Nick runs on an application process in conjunction with We Care of Grundy County, where it takes the neediest families and helps them based on applications and an interview.

These families are then selected for help from Operation St. Nick, and it’s been done this way for a long time.

Over those 41 years, Operation St. Nick has raised $2,642,164 to help families in need.

This year’s auction had some high bids, including a fully restored 1958 Cushman Scooter that sold for $8,000 and a pheasant hunting experience that sold for $4,000.

Other raffle items included a Morris Country Club corporate membership, a Southwest Airlines trip to anywhere for two, a bourbon basket and more.

The 1983 run on Cabbage Patch Dolls

Schmitz recalled his first ever radio auction in 1983, which happened amidst a famous run on Cabbage Patch Dolls. A look in on the then Ottawa Daily Times and Streator Times-Press shows classified ads full of resellers looking for the best bid just pages away from the Letters to Santa section, where little girl after little girl shared their wish to find the chubby-cheeked dolls under the tree on Christmas morning.

Schmitz was in his first few years of running Operation St. Nick, and he had 19 little girls on his list and each of them wanted Cabbage Patch Dolls. This sent Schmitz on a journey going everywhere he could think of in search of a doll.

“There was a store in Morris called Coast to Coast, and I went down to see them and asked if they had any Cabbage Patch Dolls,” Schmitz said. “He told me, ‘come here’ and took me to the back room. He showed me a list two pages long of people who wanted Cabbage Patch Dolls. I told him if he’s got any he can give me, I’ve got 19 girls that want them.”

Schmitz wasn’t having much luck until just before it was time to start giving out toys for Christmas.

“I get a phone call from, John Fletcher was his name, and he called and asked if I could come down to the story,” Schmitz said. “I went down to the store and he said ‘I got 24 Cabbage Patch Dolls in. He said ‘You get your choice. Take none of them or all of them.’”

Coast to Coast was a hardware store at 423 Liberty St. at the time, and was previously located at 320 Liberty St.

“We determined how we were going to carry these Cabbage Patch Dolls so the Coast to Coast customers wouldn’t get mad,” Schmitz said. “So we call the sheriff at the time, Jim Olson, at midnight. John Fletcher pulled up at midnight to the bank, the old First National Bank of Morris which is now Old Second National. He pulled up at midnight.”

Schmitz said they loaded up the truck like it was a Brinks truck, except instead of cash it was carrying Cabbage Patch Dolls. 19 girls in the Operation St. Nicholas program that year received Cabbage Patch Dolls.

A lot of other children didn’t get them. The 20th doll was auctioned off on the radio.