A holiday tradition continued Wednesday afternoon at WalMart in Brownwood. The KOXE morning show of Carl Wayne, Starr Goins and Randy Turner cheerfully greeted customers as they rang bells for the Salvation Army. Our radio station employees are among many individuals and groups who raise money to support Brownwood Salvation Army, but more bell ringers are needed.
“More than ever it’s harder to get bell ringers because of the COVID-19 situation and we totally understand that,” said Sue Byrd, who is helping with bell ringer registration for the Salvation Army.
“We’ve tried to do everything we can to make people feel safe as they’re ringing. We have the see-through shield screens we’ve made at the locations that people will stand behind. The buckets will be in front so there’s no face-to-face interaction between the people, but you can see each other. We’re hoping that will make people feel better while they are ringing.”
Bell ringers are stationed at Walmart, United, and Brookshire’s, along with Hobby Lobby on Saturdays.
For those interested in serving as a bell ringer, they can sign up online at registertoring.com.
“We have a website where they can go and look at what’s available, registertoring.com, and those are set up in two-hour shifts,” Byrd said. “If people go the website and see a shift they want to do but don’t want to do the full two hours, just call us, we can access that and put in the hour they want. If people don’t have access to a computer or a smart phone, to get on the website you can go to the library and they have computers available to do that, and they’re helping us with that.”
Stacy Tennison with the Salvation Army stated in a recent interview on KOXE radio, “More than ever we need to raise money this year because our numbers have more than doubled because of COVID. With the second wave of it coming up, we feel like our numbers are going to continue to be on the rise.”