Neighbor in the News

With his ready smile, warm handshake, and “Can Do” Seabees cap, Ed Wildman is well known to the morning regulars at Dunkin Donuts. A native son of Southbury, he finished school here back when the graduating class numbered only twenty three. After a stint in the Navy that took him to Guam, Okinawa, and Alaska — “It was 48 below out there” — he returned to his home town to settle and raise a family. His brother, Bill, runs a floor covering business that is still thriving in Oakville.

Ed doesn’t say exactly when he started collecting bottles and cans, to save up the deposits to buy Christmas toys for children in town, but he will allow as how he’s saved over eighty thousand bottles from ending up in landfill. He’s quick to remind the writer that he hasn’t done this alone, and you can see the warmth shining from his face as he tells of the local businesses and employees that collect up their bottles and cans for him, and the friends and even strangers who leave whole bags full for him on his porch.

Like most things, this collecting mission started simply. “I knew about the Southbury Needy Fund pretty much from the beginning,” Ed says. “I’d bring the donations of clothing and toys to Sandy Saren’s office.” He also pitched in every year to the Southbury Police Department’s annual Toy Drive, filling as many as four shopping carts with toys bought from his own pocket.

But he wanted to do more. What better way than to augment his own toy purchases with funds saved up from bottle deposits? Ed started collecting and returning bottles and cans year round, saving up the deposits in a special bank account, to be ready with a check, as well as toys, come Christmas time each year. Steadily, as people have learned of Ed’s idea, they’ve joined in to help.

Ed’s wife manages the special bank account with him. They give 10% of the balance each year as a cash donation that not only helps with Christmas purchases for struggling families, but also strengthens the Needy Fund’s resources to help folks with emergency expenses year round. By keeping a reserve that gradually grows, Ed and his wife are making sure that there will be funds in the account to carry on even after he can’t.

When asked what prompted him to make this effort, Ed modestly says, “I’m retired, now. I just help wherever I can.” That he certainly does. He helps out at the Pomperaug Health District’s flu vaccination clinics in the schools, and remembers his brothers and sisters in the service by giving out red poppies at Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Like most of us, Ed can remember when times were not too easy. But no matter what, his parents always made sure that there were presents under the tree. It’s the small things that are important. Especially to a child. That’s why, in these days, Ed wants to help make sure that “when a little boy or little girl comes down on Christmas morning, they will see that Santa came to their house, too.”

If you would like to help the children of today with warm clothes and toys, and the children of tomorrow by recycling for a clean and beautiful earth, Ed welcomes you to bring him your bottles and cans, washed clean, and neatly bagged. You can give him a call at (203) 264-3084, or even leave them on his front porch.

Wishing health and happiness to all - in the Holidays and throughout the year.