Baseball bear takes 25 years to make home run
Baseball bear takes 25 years to make home run
3 February 2022
Helen Adamczyk, Riverland Corps Leader and Salvos Stores Manager in Berri, found this toy bear in a delivery of goods from Adelaide and discovered it was part of a school project 25 years earlier and set about returning it to the school in Baltimore, in the American state of Maryland, but not before making it an honourary Aussie and showing it the sights of the area.
Having been thousands of kilometres away from home for about 25 years, a toy teddy bear, dressed in the colours of American Major League Baseball team Baltimore Orioles, is making the trip from Australia back to its home state of Maryland.
Jeremy Tosh, now 37, with his teacher, Randi Blue (left), and his mother, Donna, and daughter, Taylor ... soon to be reunited with the toy bear he sent on a journey 25 years ago.
Helen Adamczyk, Riverland Corps Leader and Salvos Stores Manager in Berri, South Australia, said the bear, in the orange strip of the baseball team, arrived in one of the regular shipments from the Salvos Stores warehouse in Adelaide and immediately caught her eye.
The backpack it wore was a little worse for wear, so Helen decided to "toss it out" but first thought to check inside. What she found was a letter from "Mrs Blue’s fifth-grade class at Deep Run Elementary School, 6925 Old Waterloo Road, Elkridge, Maryland 21227".
The letter said the students were unable to travel the world to see the places they studied, so sent stuffed animals "to travel for us", relying on "the kindness of others" to care for the toys and let the class know what adventures they had.
Along with the letter was a travel diary in which people were asked to write something about the place the toy had been and the name and address of the people involved "so we’ll know about you and the place where you live ... so we can send a thank-you note". A postcard was also requested.
The traveller was then asked to pass the toy on to another traveller so the journey would continue. The letter requested that the toy be returned to the school by 1 May 1997.
Others managed to locate Randi Blue, the fifth-grade teacher who coordinated the project and her student, Jeremy Tosh, who was 10 at the time, who sent out the Orioles bear.
Although at a different school now, Randi was a special-education teacher and maths coach at Deep Run for about 20 years.
Jeremy, now 37, is a close friend of Randi’s family: "He is my son’s best friend. His mum, Donna, is my best friend," Randi said. The families are so close; they call themselves the Bloshs.
Jeremy has a Master’s degree in engineering and works for an applied physics laboratory in Maryland. He is married and has a daughter.
Helen Adamczyk, Riverland Corps Leader and Salvos Stores Manager in Berri, with Jeremy’s bear they call Orio. Randi said the toys project was part of the class commemoration of the Thanksgiving celebration, a time when many families and out-of-town visitors traditionally gather to celebrate. "I had the students give their animal to a neighbour that was travelling or to someone who travelled to them," she said.
She said she got extra toys for students who did not have one. She and Donna, her "room mum", made the backpacks.
The toys were sent out over three years by different classes before Randi introduced a different project called Adopt a Pilot in partnership with an airline. The first year was the 1996-97 school year.
"It was a wonderful experience," Randi said. "We received many postcards. We had a world map in our classroom and put the cards around the border with a string marking the spot [they came from]. Many of the stuffed animals made it back, but, as expected, some did not. This is a wonderful time for the bear to appear as it is my final year teaching (before retirement)."
Randi said she posted recently on social media that Jeremy’s bear was to 'come home', and some of her former students commented, saying they remembered their travelling toys fondly.
A family of Aussie toy koalas accompanied Orio the Baltimore bear back to Maryland. "About three years after one of my classes sent off their animals, I received a package in the mail," Randi said. It was a stuffed bumblebee. The note said the bee was found stuffed in the back of a closet in a flat in London. Inside the bee’s backpack were many photos, and the journal was filled with messages. It spent 12 months on a submarine with naval personnel. I found the owner, Todd, at his middle school and presented the bee to him with all the treasures. He was excited to share the journal and pictures with me."
Before being sent back to the school, the toy they now call Orio spent Christmas with Helen and her family and toured the sights of the Riverland with others from the Riverland Corps faith community. He was accompanied by a family of little toy koalas on his journey home.
Comments
I volunteer at Berri Salvos Store and heard about the teddy 🥰🥰.
It has certainly had a great holiday in the Riverland with Helen’s family. Hope it gives much pleasure to it’s family in America 👍👍