Hull hands the reins over to Hass after 40-year-run
TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
For 40 years, Miller Home Furnishings in Merrill has been home to the Mitten Tree, a Christmas tree that displays mittens, hats, scarves and socks donated by the community for distribution to area children through the schools. New hats, mittens, scarves, and socks that are knit, crocheted, sewn, or purchased can be brought to the Mitten Tree and hung on its evergreen branches at Miller Home Furnishings, 120 N. Prospect St., in Merrill during normal business hours and donations are currently being accepted.
As the tree’s branches fill with donations, the Mitten Tree coordinator will take the items to area schools so teachers can distribute them as they see a need, ensuring children in the Merrill community will be warm this winter.
“Warm their hands, warm your heart,” Sandy Hull, who has been the Mitten Tree coordinator for these past 40 years, likes to say.
Originally sponsored by Merrill’s West Side Merchants and Wally Smith, owner of Miller Home Furnishings, the Mitten Tree was Hull’s pet project. “39 years ago, I actually had a Girl Scout Troop, and I got into the Mitten Tree, and one of the ladies stepped forward and suggested the Scouts make the posters to promote it,” Hull explained. Merrill Area Girl Scouts, including Daisy, Brownie, Junior, Cadette, Senior, and Ambassador Scouts, helped make posters to publicize the Mitten Tree and the need for donations throughout the community this year, and the Girl Scouts have been making the posters since the project first began.
“Since it’s such a whole community project, it’s just really good for the girls to be one sisterhood,” said Jessica Murray, one of the Merrill area’s Girl Scouts troop leaders, who helped organize the Girl Scouts’ collection of hats, mittens, socks, and scarves from area troops and the poster making this year.
“For this project, it is Merrill area Girl Scouts [rather than differentiating any particular troop],” Murray said. “We work as one big collective for the Mitten Tree.”
“This is just the kick off to the Mitten Tree with the Girl Scouts, and then the community is welcome to come to add their donations,” she added.
This year, there will be one change to the Mitten Tree: Hull is handing over the reins to her pet project to Steve Hass, a 30-year employee at Miller Home Furnishings and Merrill resident who has been actively involved in the community throughout the years, most recently as one of the Aldermen for the City of Merrill.
“We’re proud that the Mitten Tree is going to stay here,” Hass said, “and we’ll make sure it stays for as long as we’re here.”
As donations are collected, “They divide up all of the hats and mittens to all of the schools in the area,” Murray said.
“I delivered six bags of items today [to the schools],” Hass said on Monday, Dec. 6. “Donations have been great already.”
Hull wants to extend a great “thank you” to Wally and Millers for providing the tree at the store, without which none of this would be possible throughout the years.
And … “On behalf of all the children and Wally and myself,” Hull said, “We wish to say this community has always been such a sharing and caring and supportive community of the Mitten Tree. And it is with a big, heartfelt ‘Thank you’ to you that the project has been a success all these years. This means so much to the children whose heads, hands, and feet won’t be cold this winter.”
“I would like to thank the Foto News for their help in promoting the Mitten Tree for the past 40 years,” she added.
The items from the tree are made available to the children who need them through the Merrill area schools, both public and parochial. For more information, contact Steve Hass, the new Mitten Tree Coordinator, at 715.536. 5922 at Miller Home Furnishings.