"Many Hands, One Heart"

10/29/2019

In the fall of 1995, Lewis Lawson introduced Ton of Coins to the Collegiate community as an Interact Club project.

The plan was that on Halloween, kids and adults would toss their spare change into a vintage bathtub that Lawson and his friend Dick McDaniel had fished out of the woods in Powhatan County, cleaned up, and painted green and gold.

Once the accounting was complete, the club (which Lawson sponsored) would donate the proceeds to a scholarship fund that would provide financial assistance to a deserving student who demonstrated need.

Collegiate embraced Ton of Coins from the outset. In fact, it quickly became part of the fabric of the school with students (and faculty) from all three divisions stopping by the tub on October 31 to make contributions.

The initiative has generated $211,000 in lifetime giving – an impressive total, to be sure – but Lawson’s hope, then and now, was as much to raise awareness of the concept of noblesse oblige as to secure donations.

“I always liked the idea that at Halloween, don’t always think about what you can get for yourself,” Lawson said. “At Collegiate, we’ve been given so much. This seemed a great way to express to the students to think about what they can do for others.

“Halloween is All Saints’ Eve. Reaching out to others on the eve of All Saints’ Day brings out the sainthood in all of us that we’re not always thinking about our own wants, needs, and desires but what we can do to be good to others.

“If we’ve appreciated the education we’ve received at Collegiate, why not make it available to someone equally as skilled but maybe not as fortunate?”

Lawson served Collegiate as an Upper School English teacher and coach (mostly football and track) from 1972 through 2013. Upon his retirement, this rite of fall which he created and nurtured was renamed the Lewis Lawson Ton of Coins Endowment in his honor.

As the event’s 25^th anniversary approached, Bubba – his preferred sobriquet – reflected upon the success of the project.

Do you think you’ve literally raised a ton of coins?

The first year, we raised $4,100. It’s been almost all coins. They’ve come from every level of the student body. I don’t know how much they weigh, but they’re really heavy. We had years when we’d get 10 or 12 thousand dollars. We’d get 25 bags, and each bag would weigh 30 or 40 pounds. Let’s do the math. It’s over a ton.

Could you have ever imagined that Ton of Coins would be around 25 years later?

It was always my dream that it would catch on and continue. I’m happy that the tradition continues. I remember with fond memories my childhood days of marching all over the hills around my grade school (in Charleston, West Virginia). With the Collegiate kids, that memory is doing something to help others. That, to me, is the beauty of this.

Programs come and go. Why has Ton of Coins endured and thrived?

One of the phrases that I used with Interact was “Manus Multae, Cor Unum,” which means “Many Hands, One Heart.” To me, that’s really what Collegiate is. We work on any project, from educational to athletic to spiritual to helping other people, we’re many hands, but we come with one heart.

There’s a goodness to Collegiate that has a unifying spirit. Ton of Coins is a way of unifying the three divisions. We don’t want to do this as a perfunctory routine at Halloween. It’s like a sacrament: an outward and spiritual way of showing an inward and spiritual grace that we as a student body are doing this physical act to show our love for the school and how much we appreciate the beneficence bestowed on us that we, in return, want to make this possible for others.

-- Weldon Bradshaw

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