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For each million-dollar moment

And for thy smiles and wishes - t hat is why Bob Loring leads East Pasco Toys for Tots .

By ERIN SULLIVAN
Published December 24, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes] East Pasco Toys for Tots director Bob Loring, 62, greets one of his deputy elves at Alice Hall Community Center in Zephyrhills.

INSIDE ONE MAN'S DREAMS, EAST PASCO COUNTY - People aren't quite sure how to take Bob Loring, and it's not just because he heavily salts his language with "thees" and other words not spoken with sincerity - outside a performance of Hamlet - for centuries.

He is an ex-Marine, ex-drunk, unretiree who found a late-in-life calling one day when he handed a kid a toy.

Now Loring aims to save the children of east Pasco County and, in the process, himself.

"I'm paving my stairway to heaven, my dear," he said.

* * *

Loring is the director of East Pasco Toys for Tots but goes by "Head Elf." His work has expanded Toys for Tots from one distribution center to five, all targeted near "poverty pockets." This year, Loring and 200 volunteers gave toys and food and clothes to 3,153 children.

Loring's is not a Yultide passion.

He helps needy children year-round. In public, even if he's just going out for a sandwich, he is always on, schmoozing with waiters or Rotarians or public officials or university folks or just random people he meets in shopping aisles, to get them to work to make east Pasco the land he dreams it can be - a place where kids can grow up to get steady jobs with medical benefits.

Loring teaches classes - "I'm not a teacher," Loring, who studied community psychology, tells his students. "I'm a facilitator." - at the community college on how to improve communities. He holds annual summits, an everyone-is-welcome event with speakers including politicians, public servants and teachers, to address community issues.

He thinks a community does not need outside help. No pleas for government money - just people helping people.

"Democrats love me because I'm helping kids," Loring said. "And Republicans love me because I'm not asking for federal money."

* * *

Loring believes in empowering people. All Toys for Tots distribution centers have a captain, and that captain runs his or her own show. The more people put themselves into things, the more they care. Loring is the puppeteer orchestrating in the background, focused on increasing the size of the show.

"Look at this elf collection!" Loring said when he walked into the Wesley Chapel Toys for Tots center Dec. 16, a few minutes before the doors opened.

He gathered the volunteers and made them raise their right hand. This is something he does at each center every year.

"By the power vested in me as head of East Pasco Toys for Tots, I swear you in as Deputy Elves," he said. Then he made them smile for a photo.

"Okay, one, two, three: Ho, ho, ho!" he said.

Jessica White is the Dade City captain. When she first saw Loring, "I thought he was a little crazy," she said.

Now, a few years later, she still thinks he is.

"You have to be to keep up that spirit of soliciting help," she said. "Passion can look a little crazy sometimes."

* * *

Loring doesn't ask groups for money. He asks them to buy toys and school supplies and other things for needy kids - and, no, don't give it to him; bring it yourself. Once donors see the look on that kid's face, Loring said, they will feel so good that they will want to do it again.

"That's the million-dollar Toys for Tots moment," Loring said. "That's when I'm starting to feel like I'm making a difference."

Loring's motto is to think globally but act locally. He wants to get a Center for Community Studies formed in east Pasco. He envisions people from all over the world coming to east Pasco County, to study why things work so well.

* * *

"When people first meet Bob, they see him as Toys for Tots and that's it - that he lives and breathes Toys for Tots and that there is nothing else in the world," said Anna Fulk, the Wesley Chapel co-captain.

"That is so not true. You need to be with Bob several times before you actually really know him and the depth of his feelings."

* * *

Loring started all of this in 1999, when a guy from the Marine Corps Reserve called and asked if he would take over the Toys for Tots drive.

Loring and his wife, Claudia, had moved to an old Cracker-style home in Zephyrhills. She is a registered nurse. Loring - an alcoholic who sobered up and drifted from job to job - planned on retiring. He planned to sit in a rocker on his back porch and name the cows in a nearby pasture after Civil War generals and their wives. He built a huge library - a dream library, with those floor-to-ceiling shelves and a ladder that rolls - and planned on holing up there, reading and writing book reviews for Leatherneck, a magazine of the Marines.

Then Toys for Tots gave him his own million-dollar moment, and he wanted more. He figured other people would, too.

"It renewed my faith in Christmas," Loring said. "It's a calling. That's crystal clear."

* * *

If so, it's one his past has prepared him for.

In the late '70s, Loring studied community psychology at Florida International University in Miami, where he grew up and was in the Marine Corps Reserve. He then worked for the university doing outreach in schools with racial tension. His job was to get groups of kids together who hated each other and make them resolve issues.

"He was one of the best I had," said Marvin Dunn, who was Loring's professor and boss. Dunn retired in October.

"Bob is very, very giving. He's the most generous person I know - of his time, of his resources."

Dunn knew Loring when he was drinking, when he isolated himself from the world and thought of suicide, then when he pulled himself together and fought the disease and got sober. He said Loring's uber upbeat personality is sincere, but it's also "sometimes a coverup for a deeper pain."

* * *

In Pasco, Loring focused his energies.

Every year, he got more toys and opened more distribution centers. Then he found a guy who would give Food for Tots (this year, the group passed out 80,000 pounds). He asked Rotary Clubs to organize Skivvies for Tots - giving underwear, toothbrushes and other essentials.

He got the U.S. Postal Service involved by having carriers pick up toys at people's homes. Then, the Boy and Girl Scouts agreed to pick up the toys from post offices and bring them to storage centers. Loring has firefighters picking up toys from boxes - on their off days.

Loring figured his unique personality would help his cause. So he ramped it up.

His news releases don't say "Attention media." They say, "Ahoy media friends!" One e-mail to this reporter ended with:

What fun! Are we still havin' fun? If not ... then we're not doing it right. Now let me see that winning smile. ...

See "Thee" on the morrow. (I'm of ol' Quaker stock.)

Semper Fidelis, Bashful Bob - abides

Loring comes from a military family, and his library is stuffed with books about all of the U.S. wars. He is a warrior, but he doesn't look like one.

He is 62 years old, tall and rail thin. His skin is fair and thin, almost translucent, his hair a faded red. He has almost no eyebrows. His eyes are a faint blue. He walks with a limp (a "swagger," he calls it) from being hit by a car three decades ago. He looks like he would be weak.

"My God, he's this skinny, pale little guy. He's got this pink hair and a wimpy looking thing about him," said his neighbor, Warner Conarton, whom Loring battles at chess every Wednesday.

"But the more you are around him, the more handsome he gets. He looks you straight in the eye. He stands up straight, and he doesn't back away when you flare up, and he's always trying to find something nice to say about you.

"After a while, you get past this Technicolor film he has, and he kind of turns into Clark Gable."

Conarton hears all about Loring's vision for east Pasco County.

"Bob is apparently very persuasive. I don't know that for myself," he said. "I don't remember him talking me into anything. But maybe that's what persuasive means."

* * *

Loring is not always Head Elf Bob. His perfect day is spent at home with his wife, and the phone doesn't ring. She said Loring is more content than she has ever known him to be - that he's maximizing his potential.

"He is a visionary," she said.

"Or," Loring said, joking, "I just have visions."

Times researchers Cathy Wos and Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Erin Sullivan can be reached at (813) 909-4609 or esullivan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 23, 2006, 23:09:45]