On a chilly fall day in 2003, Sylvester Taylor arrived at a St. Louis children’s home to take the boy he mentored to a Cardinals’ game.
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| From left, Carl Burke, vice president of the Greater St. Louis Electrical Workers Minority Caucus and a Local 1439 member; EWMC President Sylvester Taylor and member Tiffany Jones, both of Local 1; and an employee of one of several crisis nurseries in the St. Louis area where EWMC elves delivered new coats during the holidays. The annual coat drive benefitted many other schools and community agencies that care for children in need.
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“Hey, get your coat, it’s going to be cold,” the Local 1 journeyman wireman told him. “I don’t have a coat,” the 12-year-old said, hanging his head.
There were never enough coats to go around, and older kids had taken his. When Taylor asked how he stayed warm, the boy lifted his sweatshirt to reveal two more, saying he rotated the layers each day.
Taylor vowed to find coats for all the youth, triggering an IBEW project that’s kept thousands of St. Louis-area children warm and dry over the past 18 years.
The first full-fledged coat drive was 2004, the same year Taylor founded the city’s chapter of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus, comprising members of Local 1 and utility Local 1439.
“We had a goal of around 450 coats this year and we blew right past that,” said Taylor, now the director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for the Electrical Connection, the local’s IBEW/NECA partnership. “We’ll top 11,000 new coats since we started.”
Between Local 1, the EWMC, and the Electrical Connection, the coat drive is just one of the many ways that IBEW members bring holiday joy to their community, Business Manager Frank Jacobs said.
Among them, he said, they help fund “Shop with a Cop” programs that pair youngsters with first responders for holiday shopping sprees. Local 1 also hosts the U.S. Probation Holiday Giving Program, providing gifts for scores of families, along with turkeys or hams.
Christmas week, Taylor and his elves had two more carloads of coats to deliver to social service agencies, including a trip to a third crisis nursery.
Tiffany Jones, a EWMC board member and telecommunications journeyman technician, volunteered at one of the nurseries as a teenager. Now she helps supply them with coats and clothing through annual Minority Caucus fundraisers that include a comedy show and holiday dance.
“It feels like coming full circle, from donating my time to donating things they badly need,” Jones said. “And they need everything.”