Daughter ensures late mom’s CCSD holiday gift drive keeps on giving

Susan Goldman was organizing a holiday gift drive she started more than 20 years ago to benefit homeless and refugee students in the Clark County School District last year when she became ill with COVID-19.

She was hospitalized and died in December 2020 at 74, just one day after the gifts were delivered.

Now her daughter Mollie Fulwider, a secretary for the school district, is carrying on her mother’s legacy and working to ensure it endures for years to come.

School district attendance officers rounded up 24 vans on Tuesday to pick up about 450 gifts and approximately 1,000 stockings at Orr Middle School in Las Vegas. They were delivered to about 32 schools to benefit mostly Title I Homeless Outreach Program for Education (HOPE) students, as well as some refugee children.

As she helped move gifts, Fulwider — who was wearing a pin with her mother’s photo on it — said she was feeling a wide range of emotions, beginning with a tearful start to the day.

But she also was proud that her mom’s stocking drive and wish list project was continuing.

“I know she would be so happy right now,” she said.

Early next year, Fulwider plans to start looking into launching a foundation in her mother’s name in hopes of expanding the gift drive in the future.

Goldman worked for more than two decades in the district, including as project facilitator for Title I HOPE. She started the holiday gift drive about 22 years ago.

She loved the project and if a gift didn’t make it to a student as planned, Goldman would even go shopping at midnight to make sure that child was taken care of, Fulwider recalled.

Even the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t stop Goldman from organizing the drive again last year, though she wasn’t able to see it to completion after becoming ill herself.

The school district was operating under 100 percent distance learning at the time, but Goldman had attendance officers come to her backyard, where they sorted and loaded up the gifts.

Fulwider stepped into the role this year, approaching the school district in August and getting approval in late October.

It’s been a major undertaking, but she said she has received lots of help, including from her mother’s friends.

Donors from previous years also reached out to her to get involved again. And a handful of school district campuses organized donation drives where students brought in items to help fill the stockings.

“I’m just overwhelmed with the amount of help everyone gave,” Fulwider said.

Each school with students participating in the program provided a wish list with items requested and clothing sizes. Among the gifts this year were computer tablets, skateboards, clothes, toys and Bluetooth speakers.

Orr Middle School let Fulwider use its theatre to store the items and provided help, including from students, with sorting. Fulwider’s supervisor at the school district’s central offices allowed her some time to pursue the project.

Pam Foltz, a senior attendance officer with the school district, was among those helping Fulwider load gifts on Tuesday. She said she previously worked with Goldman on the project, one that attendance officers have been involved with for about 18 years.

She said Fulwider has taken on an enormous responsibility to keep it going, especially since she has young children at home.

Foltz said she loves dropping off gifts at schools and seeing how excited the staff are when they come outside to get the presents for their students.

“We just need the help for the kids,” she said, referring to the perennial demand for donors to keep the project operating for future holiday seasons.

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.