One idea turns into sweet success

It's funny how holiday traditions can get started.

One day a thought pops into a Naperville dentist's head: What if we offer to buy people's extra unopened Halloween candy for $1 a pound and send what we collect to our troops overseas to give them a taste of home?

The next thing you know, Naperville's senior services coordinator catches wind of the plan and convinces the city to help out by putting collection boxes at several municipal buildings.

Then the president of Operation Support Our Troops -- Illinois, Inc. hears about it and promises to make sure all that chocolate gets to where it needs to go.

It all comes together really, really fast and -- for 90 minutes on the day after Halloween -- the dentist opens his office to patients, city employees and just regular folks who want to drop off their bags of sweets.

When it's over and all the candy has been weighed, organizers discover they've accumulated 772 pounds of Dots, Twix and everything in between.

Within the week, every last Hershey and Heath bar is packaged by volunteers and sent on its way to brighten the days of men and women serving their country in far-away places.

And here's the part bound to give you a sugar high: Everybody involved is feeling so good about the program that they're already talking about doing it again in 2008 and beyond. Only next time, they say, it'll be even bigger and better.

100 … 200 … 300 …

When Dr. Hitesh Patel came up with his "cash for candy" idea at The Art of Dentistry, 1060 E. Ogden Ave., "we were thinking 100 pounds would be a lot to get," said receptionist Lynn Smith, who served as spokeswoman.

It was supposed to be a small effort to encourage kids not to nuzzle up to too many Nestles and, in the process, to offer our military personnel a reminder of hearth, home and Halloween.

"No matter what you think about the war or what your politics are, there are a lot of people who care about our troops," Smith said.

With less than a month to plan the event, nobody in the office really had any idea what the response would be.

No one at city hall was sure how it would turn out, either, when Senior Services Coordinator Marita Manning urged the Employee Advisory Committee to participate.

The city explained the program in an e-mail to employees on the day before Halloween and put out collection boxes at city hall, the police and fire complex, the electric service center and water tower west.

Smith, meanwhile, e-mailed copies of a newspaper story about the event to patients and hoped word would spread.

When Nov. 1 arrived, Smith was hoping for the best.

Heart and soul

She got her wish.

First, Mayor George Pradel showed up to greet people. Then the city delivered roughly 200 pounds of candy workers had donated.

It was a remarkable response and "a testament to the heart and soul of our employees," Naperville Community Relations Manager Nadja Lalvani said.

And that was just the start.

It was trick-or-treat in reverse. Every time the door opened someone else was coming in to deliver candy. Many of them were kids, most of them were strangers, and all of them wanted to contribute.

"A lot of the kids who came didn't even want the money, they just wanted to donate the candy for the troops," Smith said. "It was so great to see. I think we enjoyed it more than they did."

Pradel said he was thrilled to meet youngsters who were willing to donate goodies they had gathered for people who can't just walk to the corner White Hen for a Milky Way.

"It was such a delight to see the smiles on the children's faces when they turned in their candy," he said. "They were an awesome group."

There was just one problem. When the collection period ended, it occurred to Smith and the two other women who work in the office that nobody had quite figured out how they were supposed to get 772 pounds of candy from Naperville to the Operation Support Our Troops warehouse in Lisle.

"We enlisted our husbands on Saturday to drag it over there," she said with a laugh.

One more time

It's funny how holiday traditions can get started.

One day a thought pops into your head and you're not sure it will work. Before you know it, people are embracing your idea and working to expand upon it.

Lalvani and Smith say they're eager to make the candy collection an annual event for the city and the dentist's office.

"This is a new Halloween tradition for us," Lalvani said.

"We're going to make it even bigger and better next year," Smith said. "We're going to start working on it at the end of August."

With more time to plan and publicize it, who knows how successful the event can be?

"Next year," Smith said, "we're going to aim for 1,000 pounds. And wouldn't it be a great thing if we didn't have to send it overseas?"