The annual event provides hundreds of teddy bears for children from all walks of life.
The sight of dozens of churchgoers strolling into Hope Lutheran on a Teddy Bear Sunday, toy bears in hand and smiles for miles, is one of the Rev. Dean Pfeffer’s favorites of any year.
Hope’s latest Teddy Bear Sunday, held during the Feb. 17 service, saw more than 100 teddy bears donated to the church to create a fluffy “bear mountain.” After the service, the bears were prepared to be donated to Tampa Rough Riders, Inc. for distribution.
“It is so much fun to watch people come walking in,” Pfeffer said. “People in their 60s, 70s and 80s clutching a teddy bear, and the smile on their faces when they’re coming into church carrying those things.”
The church selects a different organization or cause to donate bears to each year. In 2018, Hope donated its bears to Eckerd Connects kids. Hope has donated to Plant City Police Department and Plant City Fire Rescue in the past, giving officers the ability to give bears to children they encounter who needed some comfort.
The church has given bears to members of its own congregation who served in the military, shipping bears overseas to places like Iraq and Afghanistan for the troops and kids encountered by the troops to have.
Pfeffer said a plane crash around the time of Sept. 11, 2001 affected members of the congregation of the Rev. David H. Benke, a friend of Pfeffer’s, so Hope sent its bears to Brooklyn, New York for the children of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church.
This is the first year Hope has worked with the Rough Riders, a Tampa-based group that styles itself as a “living memorial” to President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s refusal to kill a small bear captured by aides during a 1902 hunting trip made waves around the country and led to the creation of “Teddy’s Bear,” inspired by both the act and the President’s nickname.
Fittingly, the Tampa Rough Riders have their own annual teddy-centric event: their Teddy Bear Runs provide thousands of bears to “hospital patients, cancer survivors and their families, centers for abused women and children, community health centers, special needs day care centers and foster children,” according to the group’s website. Hope’s bears will be delivered to children all over Hillsborough County through the Rough Riders.
Before the bears are donated to the organization of Hope’s choice, they’re tagged with notes from Hope’s Human Care Ministry as well as John 3:16 “to remind the recipient of God’s neverending love for us,” Pfeffer said.
