LAWRENCE, Kan. -- As Jay Morris describes how he and a bunch of helpers use chunks of donated wood to create children’s toys each Christmas, one of those volunteers interrupts.

“Jay, we got a wobbly,” neighbor Steve Wood hollers out from across the small woodshop in Morris’ basement in Lawrence, Kansas.

Just like a head elf would do at the North Pole, Morris stops mid-sentence, apologizes for the “red alert,” and heads to the wooden toy delivery truck that needs a little attention. After a bit of tweaking and dabbing glue on a wheel, Morris deems another worthy, sturdy and ready.

And that’s a good thing. In just a few days, Morris will begin delivering the 115 trucks he and his crew have made this season to four area Toys for Tots drives, including the one that serves the Kansas City area.

These delivery trucks, with tambour doors — made of wood slats strung together with bungee cord that allows them to roll up or down as the door is opened and closed — go to families that have signed up to receive toys from the annual holiday Marine charity event for their children to open at Christmas. This year, Toys for Tots is filling a record 60,000 requests in the Kansas City area alone and every donation counts.

Before the collecting even began last month, workers at the Overland Park Convention Center — the region’s largest donation hub for the Marine toy drive — knew they’d be seeing the wooden trucks. They just didn’t know what design the creator had come up with this time.

“It’s so cool that somebody is putting in this much effort to give kids a nice Christmas,” says Britaney Wehrmeister, of the Overland Park Convention Center, who marvels at the trucks each year. Yet she didn’t even know who made them until she tracked Morris down a week ago.

“We all look forward to them every year,” she says. “Everyone gets excited to see them. The guys are like, ‘These are the coolest gifts.’”

This year’s delivery trucks, made of scraps of oak and maple and poplar, seem strong enough for toddlers to sit on, large enough to haul a platoon of Army toy soldiers and just complex enough to keep a child’s attention for more than a few minutes.

Exactly what Morris hopes for each year he comes up with a new style of truck to create.

“We’re trying the best we can to not make something that will land on the Island of Misfit Toys,” Morris says, smiling wide, referring to the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer cartoon. “No square wheels.”

No wobbly trucks.

From Labette County to KC

Other nonprofits that receive his toys share the same excitement. In the early days, Morris knew he wanted to do something for “kids without Christmas,” he just didn’t know where to donate his creations.

Then a nurse practitioner friend of his in Labette County, Kansas, had an idea.

“(He) said, ‘Dude, you ought to do Toys for Tots,” Morris recalled. “And I went, ‘Ah, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

Ben Cochran is that friend. He and his wife, Audra, have overseen the Labette County Toys for Tots campaign for the past five years. He remembers that conversation with Morris and the first time in 2017 he dropped off his trucks.

“I was absolutely blown away by the quality and the craftmanship,” Cochran says. “You just don’t find toys like that anymore, you know what I mean?”

In Labette County, where 200 to 250 families — and their 600 to 700 children — are helped by Toys for Tots each year, they operate the drive a bit differently. Organizers set up the toys and games like a store and parents can come in and shop for their kids, picking out what they would like. Cochran says the JHM Woodworks toys “do really well” each year and are always taken.

Parents are “amazed,” he says, with the craftmanship and “how great they look, but they’re still functional.”

“We have some parents that are here every year and that’s one of the things they look for, is Jay’s toys,” Cochran says. “They have several years worth of his toys, and they hold up really well.”

After the success in Labette, Morris went to the Marine Toys for Tots in his own county (Douglas) and talked to the woman running it. He offered a few trucks to give away.

“She kind of looked at them, and said, ‘I don’t know if those will go over too well,’” Morris remembers her saying. “I said, ‘I got five of them. You can have them. If you don’t give them away, I’ll just come back and pick them up.’

“Before I even got home, she called me and said, ‘You got five more of those?’”

Then he added Crawford County to his delivery list and finally the Kansas City area in 2021.

Last year, 150 ‘54 Chevy trucks came out of Morris’ woodshop. Because he didn’t have as much wood this year, he couldn’t crank out as many delivery trucks.

Though Morris doesn’t get to see the excitement on kids’ faces when they open one of his JHM Woodworks creations, he says he can imagine how happy the handmade toy makes them.

“If I can affect, if we can affect, over 100 kids every year, give them something that they never thought they would get, then that’s really a cool thing,” says Morris, clad in a brown T-shirt with a bunch of sawdust sprinkled all over it and the words Toy Builder on the front. “I assume every kid’s going to be loving these. I know I would because I still got a little Peter Pan left in me.”

He smiles wide and adds, “Probably too much sometimes.”

The rules of toy building

The father of grown twin boys just retired late last year after four decades as a pharmaceutical salesman. He uses the leftover wood, called “cutoffs,” given to him each year by a “generous benefactor.”

Morris got his first load of donated wood in 2014 and spent three years making large sets of building blocks. That’s a whole lot of sanding, Morris says. And it’s why he quickly bought into an idea he says Mary Ann, his “smart wife,” had years ago.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you make trucks?’

So, starting in 2017, that’s what he did with the donated wood. Each year a new design and more trucks.

Morris has two rules for every toy truck he makes.

First, he says, kids have to be able to put stuff in it. They have to be able to carry something around in the truck.

And rule No. 2?

“Something has to move on it, other than a wheel,” Morris says. “Like a tailgate or a dump truck that articulates, a very simple thing like that.

“I always liked the toys you can do stuff with, not just push around.”

Mary Ann Morris says she loves that over the years her husband “gets to be creative and kids who aren’t getting a present, get a present.”

Her husband hopes that other “old geezers like me,” who are woodworkers can make similar toy trucks that follow the “prime directive.” You have to be able to put stuff in it and something other than the wheels has to move.

“Challenge offered,” Morris says. “It can be one, five or more trucks built, then donated to Toys for Tots.”

A new design each year

The retired pharmaceutical salesman built dump trucks in 2017, and trains the next year. But those seven-car train sets may have had a pretty quick expiration date.

“We only did that one year because it was too many pieces for one kid,” Morris said. “We couldn’t affect as many kids.”

The 18 wheelers in 2023 were fun.

“The kids love that,” Morris says, “because they can put a whole division of Army men in there and carry them around.”

But 2022, that’s the year he and his family won’t forget — “it about killed us.”

One of his sons had just made his first “adult purchase,” a Jeep Gladiator. And he told his dad that they should make a model of that.

So they did.

“It was so detailed,” Morris says. “Very detailed.”

The Jeep bed was big enough for kids to load up a pile of small toys. And not just one thing other than the wheels moved, but two.

Wehrmeister, of the Overland Park Convention Center, remembers that year.

“The windshield actually moved down,” she said. (The tailgate also moved.)

Over the years, Morris and his volunteers — who he said he couldn’t do what he does without them — have built nearly 850 trucks for children in need. During Covid, he and his brother, Kelan, created the toys alone.

“The old guys that come in, they’re all retired,” Morris says. “It gives them something to do. And they love watching the process, being part of the process. Starting in August all the way ‘til today, when we finally get all these wheels put on, and they’re all done.”

Repurposing what’s tossed, forgotten

A sign outside Morris’ basement shop says it all: “Sawdust is Man Glitter.”

On the last day of building, five volunteers of about a dozen that routinely help out joined Morris inside as his favorite tunes played, often drowned out by the sounds of drills. All the volunteers were recruited or found out about Morris’ nonprofit in a different way.

“He said he needed help,” says friend Steve Dillon, a retired physician. “So I came over.”

He’s been going over for four or five years now and marvels at how his friend was able to operate his nonprofit and build toys while still working.

Steve Wood met Morris when he moved to the neighborhood last year.

“He approaches the neighbors,” Wood says, laughing. “He’s say, ‘You looking for a good time?”

Soon after, the pitch for toy making comes.

Brandon Bradshaw, 42, drives from Independence, Missouri to help in the shop. He heard about Morris and his nonprofit on Facebook and brings his son, Bryce, who Morris says has the mind of a 32-year-old.

Bradshaw says woodworking has been in his blood since he was eight and turned his first candlestick with his grandfather. The father and son have been to Morris’ shop four or five times and Bradshaw says as long as Morris keeps letting them come out and help, they’ll be there.

Bryce, who has been taking things apart and putting them back together for years, is definitely up for that.

“I usually try to solve problems,” says Bryce, who turns 13 this month.

Just outside the woodshop, in Morris’ “man cave,” he’s built shelves near the ceiling that wrap the room. That’s where all the years’ designs are on display. Some are au natural, others are sealed with the tung oil that he dips them in before they’re donated.

And because he keeps building, he had to add shelves in the hallway leading to the upstairs. The delivery truck will go up next, another reminder of what people can do for others.

“It’s repurposing stuff that’s just lost or forgotten or tossed and now I can actually feel good,” Morris says, a big grin crossing his face. “Like I took those big chunks of wood and me and all my helpers made 100 and some of these trucks.

“Next year, we’ll do the same thing, but just a different truck.”

©2025 The Kansas City Star. Visit at kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.