When I was a child in Wallowa County, my family initiated a mini-tradition on Christmas morning of hopping in the family car and visiting friends. The rules were never to overstay our welcome and, although everyone consistently offered us food, to never consume quantities that might compete with the giant family repast waiting at home.

The thought of anyone going hungry on Christmas morning never entered my mind.

Earlier this month, my wife and I attended a Christian concert in Lewiston. The music was fantastic and my wife smiled in joy, and a favorite memory among many surfaces when recalling a spiel made by Jeremy Camp’s keyboard player before Camp and band came on stage.

It’s common for high level Christian rock bands to promote something other than quality music, and intertwined with Camp-and-band’s overall purpose is support for an organization named Compassion International. Compassion now solicits sponsors, even rich Americans, to donate $38 a month to adopt one impoverished child around the world and supply him or her with bounties they never imagined: adequate health benefits, education, and food.

On one tour in 2010, the Jeremy Camp Band ventured to Sao Paulo, Brazil to visit a Compassion school, but was denied access to the innermost regions of that slum-ridden, crowded city where the school was located because it was Sunday, the busiest day of the week for drug lords to peddle their wares. In essence, any non-drug travel was limited to a crawl so as not to compete with important business.

The keyboard player said the sight of numerous men with ammunition strapped around their bodies armed with automatic weapons was unnerving.

Yet their translator was not to be deterred. He or she made two or three phone calls, spoke with the premier drug lord in the area, and suddenly the Jeremy Camp Band was extended royal treatment to visit the school.

The difference, as later explained by the translator, was that the drug lord was a human being and knew the values that Compassion International brought to persons living in that inner city where members of the Brazilian government never dared to go.

In this instance and many others, food to a starving world helps open doors or even pays the price of admission for hope and even joy.

Back to Wallowa County.

Following high school — inadvertently prioritizing adventure above the lure of lucre — I moved away and one lady initiated a Christmas tradition of her own that, for 40 years, has positively impacted hundreds and hundreds of Wallowa County residents. And, roughly akin but not even close to the masses of poor grouped in Sao Paulo, it’s been the neediest locals who’ve gained from that Christmas program.

It’s been Lois Harvey and the Harvey Elves.

But now the Harveys that remain are older, tired, lacking adequate community support, and going away.

That can’t happen. I propose a new nonprofit called Harvey Elves II. Do the modern thing by naming a board of directors (how about Cheryl from Josephy Center, Ken from Creating Memories, Julie from Divide Camp, and Nils because he’s a gift wherever he goes, for starters?), and applying for grant money for Christmas toys and food for the poor in Wallowa County.

Lyn could write for grants.

And, believe me, the money is available.

If thousands and thousands of grant dollars can be accrued to memorialize a city that’s not had a resident for possibly 90 years, I strongly believe a shekel or two could be found to promote joy (and wellness) here at Christmas time.

Jabberwock II columnist Rocky Wilson is a reporter for the Chieftain.