Undercover giving

Ed Toren says he’s a “slide under the table” kind of guy. He likes working behind the scenes to help those in need.

His wife, Lana, also shies away from the spotlight, though she’s just as diligent in her charitable giving.

The Torens have always felt their giving during the Christmas holiday season should be neither seen nor heard. But if their story can prompt others to embrace a spirit of giving, they’re willing to sow the seeds.

Their biggest annual project is making gifts for the Toys for Tots program operated by the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Lana makes doll clothes — no big deal, she says — and gathers toys here and there.

Ed’s undertaking is sizable.

This year he made 216 wooden toys to be given to children who otherwise might not have anything under the Christmas tree.

He grew up in the Valier area on the other side of the mountains. It was a hardscrabble life.

“We were poor, it was hard times,” he recalled. “Christmas for me was maybe a pair of pants.”

And, he said with a smile, who really wants to get a pair of pants for Christmas?

“I’m not negating what I grew up with, but I felt if I can contribute at all, I would do so,” he said. “The intent is to offset what mom and dad can’t give.”

When Ed, a former Columbia Falls mayor, retired from Schellinger Construction four years ago, the time was right to get going on his toy workshop. He had been acquiring tools for a few years before retirement, with a hunch he would get going on his woodworking hobby.

His skills are largely self-taught, though taking shop in high school and working around the farm with his father, who was both a farmer and carpenter, gave him the fundamentals.

“The real key [in learning about wood] was the sawmills,” he said. He spent 15 years at Louisiana-Pacific in Columbia Falls and another 15-plus years with American Timber at OIney, working his way up the company ladder and doing a number of jobs that gave him a thorough understanding of wood.

“There’s still something magic about wood,” he said. “It’s an art to cut it properly.”

But anyone who has basic tools can do what he does, he insists, and he encourages others to get into woodworking and then giving back to the community.

“It’s addictive,” he admitted. “I live in my shop.”

He turns out a wide array of wooden toys: Rocking doll beds, bubble gum machines, cribbage boards, rocking horses, rubber-band guns, slingshots, folding chairs and various games and puzzles.

Plum Creek Timber Co. donates much of the wood he needs. The Evergreen facility supplies a pickup load of “cut-offs” each year, and the Columbia Falls facility donates 1-by-12s for the toys. Schellinger Construction helps with Ed’s tool needs.

When he isn’t making items for Toys for Tots, Ed crafts wooden items and sells them at the local farmers markets, mainly the Kalispell market. He makes one-of-a-kind baby rattles from hardwoods and hands out a free rattle to every expectant mother he sees at the markets, another quiet way of giving.

Sometimes the parents of children who have received his toys through Toys for Tots discover him at the farmers markets.

“One time a lady came up to me at the Columbia Falls market and threw her arms around me,” he recalled. “‘You’re the one,’ she said.”

The handmade 1937 Lincoln town cars each of her two small sons had received at Christmas had been made by Ed. The appreciation was heartfelt.

Another tradition the Torens carry out each year is a covert giveaway to a family in need. They’re paying forward what someone did for them many years ago.

Ed was out of work when the mill shut down over the holiday season when Lana was pregnant with their second child.

“We came home and found boxes of gifts for us, for our son and for the baby-to-be,” he recalled. “So every Christmas after that we’ve selected a family and have dropped off gifts anonymously.”

One year while delivering gifts to a Kalispell home in the dark of night, the homeowner, seeing only their shadowy figures, came after them with a shotgun and they high-tailed it out of there.

“We can’t run as fast as we used to,” Ed said with a laugh. “It’s harder to get away.”

Their two grown children and their families now carry on that anonymous spirit of giving.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.