Cloudy with rain developing this afternoon. High 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..
Thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Low 53F. SSE winds at less than 5 mph, increasing to 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
CJ Wheeler with donations at Realty One Group Liberty in Southern Pines.
CJ Wheeler with donations at Realty One Group Liberty in Southern Pines.
Poland native Kuba Jewgieniew, founder and CEO of Realty One Group, began collecting toys and other small items last week for Ukrainian children seeking refuge in neighboring countries. He and his Ukrainian-born wife, Luba, and their four daughters began assembling toys and other small items into shoeboxes for easy shipping.
Soon, they opened the initiative up to the wider community. Through Realty One Group’s franchise locations around the country, the company has now acquired thousands of boxes.
Hollie Vires, owner of Realty One Group Liberty in Southern Pines and Fayetteville decided to “take the mission that Kuba started and drive it home.” So far, she’s collected 207 shoeboxes ready to be shipped.
Included in them are toys collected by longtime Pinehurst resident and Holocaust survivor Ralph Jacobson.
Jacobson was forced to flee his native Germany at the age of 10 — at a time when Nazis were raiding his and other Jewish homes, often stealing personal belongings like toys.
Of his family, only he and his mother survived World War II. Jacobson collected toys for the rest of his life.
Since his death last October, his wife Vivian has donated parts of his collections, but held onto four special boxes of soft stuffed toys. Now, they are headed “back to Europe,” Vivian says, “to the place from which toys were originally taken from Ralph.”
Vires will collect donations until noon Friday, March 11, at 251 Commerce Ave., Southern Pines.
“It’s the largest refugee immigration since World War II, and so many of these children have nothing but the clothes on their back," she says. "It’s so close to his heart, his wife is from there, we have other agents that are also Ukrainian. If it’s close to our owner's heart it’s close to my heart."
For more information, call 910-606-3314.
Serena Lovely is a staff writer at The Sway and The Pilot. She can be reached at serena@itsthesway.com.
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