(keys tapping) - This is our Christmas village.

It started in 1989 with just one piece and slowly, slowly and then began to pick up speed that as anniversaries and birthdays and Christmas, it was expanded.

Some I just couldn't resist and some my family couldn't resist buying.

But the way I look at the whole concept is two switches turns on peace.

If I've had a tough day, I don't have to turn on one light in the house.

I just have to flip those two switches and this says, "You're okay."

(gentle music) If I can help somebody else, and this is just as honest as I can say it, if I can help somebody else, that's my goal in life.

- [Reporter] For 19 years, Eveline's Sunshine Cottage has helped to house single mothers and their families.

- [Reporter 2] This is the 33rd year the Eveline Rivers Christmas Project has brought smiles to the less fortunate children of the Texas Panhandle.

- Giving of me is what I think life is all about, but I had some tough times.

Let me back up just a hint.

I'm Eveline Rivers-McCoy and originally I was from Little Rock, Arkansas, but for 61 years I'm from Amarillo, Texas.

I was born in Little Rock.

I was absolutely in heaven for five years and then my little sister was born.

There were two of us then, and I learned to absolutely fall in love with this child.

We had great parents.

My parents were educated.

My mom was a teacher and my dad was an engineer.

So my family was small, but we were very a tight-knit family.

My grandmother, which was my mom's mom, was actually my role model.

She was interested in helping other people.

My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis, very crippling, and she was part of an organization in Northern Kentucky for the children born with afflictions or polio or MS or, or, or type things.

But she was so intricate in trying to make their life better.

And there was a summer camp that the children were taken to.

It had a big swimming pool, it had games, and I was a swimmer and diver.

So she would take me with her and I was in the pool with the kids.

And it just, it just made my heart feel good that something I could say to them or hug on them or show them how to do something.

So that Gram was my Gram, but she was also intricate.

She taught me to sew.

She taught me to cook.

And I had a fabulous mom who could do the same things.

It's just Gram was there and that's who I seemed to go to.

We lived close by so when Mom would say something I wasn't happy with, I'd head to Gram's house and Gram would make that feel better.

And that was the way Gram was.

And then at a very young age of 17, because I was a, early into my class age, I started the University of Arkansas.

(upbeat bright music) Beautiful, beautiful university.

And I did not know one soul.

I was somewhat confident in myself, but when you go into not knowing anybody, you really have to rebuild.

So I was a home economics major, thought home economics is exactly where I wanted to be.

I could sew, I could cook, I could do all those things.

And end of my freshman year, I discovered that there were males taller than I was out there in the real world, and one of those was a basketball player for the University of Arkansas.

Lester Wayne Rivers.

He was known by Wayne to everybody.

Never Lester, never Les.

It was always Wayne.

He was dating my best friend.

Of course.

She was from Canyon at the University of Arkansas.

He was from Amarillo at the University of Arkansas.

And so she was not a cook.

I was a cook.

So he wanted to have a birthday cake made for his roommate.

So Karen said, "Ask Eveline.

She can do it."

So I did.

The next night, he brought me a piece of that cake and that's where it started.

We decided we would get married at the beginning of my junior year of college just because of separation.

It didn't, it wasn't going to change.

The comfort zone is what was the challenge in the change.

How were people, how was I going to accept the change?

How were others going to accept the change?

So we did.

And got married in Arkansas and moved here immediately and I have been here ever since 1964.

The drive from Little, well actually, from Fayetteville to here I looked out that window and I said, "What are those big things in the distance?"

Wayne looked at that and he said, "Where?"

And I said, "You know, just right over there."

He said, "Are you talking about oil wells?"

I said, "I guess."

I had no clue.

So I had no, I mean, I did not know about Amarillo, Texas.

Did not know where it was.

His family was very ingrained here.

The Rivers in Canadian, the Rivers in Amarillo all were related.

And so I grew up with a fabulous, fabulous establishment of relatives.

His mom was incredible.

It was like you knew and she knew exactly how to make everything right.

Not only to her children, but to neighborhood kids, to me, to the rest of the family.

It was, I have always put her on a pedestal.

She was fantastic.

(gentle music) My mom was fabulous and Wayne's mom was fabulous.

So I had two families, my own and my adoptive family.

And in my mind, when I was at the University of Arkansas, I was going to create, design and create beautiful wedding gowns.

I loved intricacy.

I loved, I loved creativity.

And so I've always sewn.

My grandmother taught me to sew when I was 10.

So when I got here, that was always on the back of my mind.

I would sometimes help other people with making a dress that they needed or hemming, et cetera, et cetera.

But once I blended into Wayne's big family, I saw the love and I bonded well with that.

They just took me in like I was one of theirs.

So that seemed to expand on my thoughts.

My oldest son is Todd Wayne Rivers and my daughter is Allison Eveline Rivers.

(gentle music) The kids were great.

They were siblings that interacted with each other.

Then I thought, "I really, really wished we had a great big family."

And Wayne said, "Do you know if you have a great big family, you have to put clothes on them?

You have to buy them Christmas, you have to put them through college.

You might think about that."

And that's what I think I really wanted.

But I didn't have adoption as a thought.

I didn't.

When our children were old enough to play into sports, we were at a basketball game and we were playing the Children's Home team on a Sunday morning and there was this precious little boy that was everywhere.

So I realized he was part of the Children's Home.

So I walked to Wayne, who's talking to a dad, and I said, "Hey, I'm going to go down and talk to the nun in charge of the Children's Home and see if that little guy is adoptable."

And he looked at me and said, "Well, go right ahead," as though I'd said, "I think I'm gonna go buy a hot dog."

So I went down and talked to the nun and he was adoptable.

We saw him in October.

We had him come to our home in November for Thanksgiving.

We applied for him in December.

We were approved in January and we got him in February.

And our caseworker said, "Eveline, you did everything wrong, so it was meant to be."

We adopted Rusty, which his name was Ronaldo, and then we took my dad's middle name and my husband, Wayne's dad's middle name was Warren, both of our dads.

So we named him Ronaldo Warren.

And we called him Rusty 'cause he had kind of an auburn colored hair.

It was beautiful.

I was so excited.

I thought, "Okay, now we have three."

It was the intricacy of the people in Wayne's family, the number in the family that actually said, "You could do this.

You could have a family like this and be happy as you could be."

And so I think I fed off of that.

So I said, "Wayne, can we do that one more time?

Adoption?"

He said, "Well, we can, but this will be the last time.

And if we don't get these, we're not gonna try again."

So we applied for two girls, but they were in a family of four.

Had we applied for all four, we'd have gotten them in no time.

But the splitting of the family was the wrong thing to do and I didn't think through that.

And luckily, they were all adopted together by a family in Oregon, but I was crushed.

It was right after that we didn't get the other two children and I thought, "I need to do something for somebody for Christmas."

So I bought a baby doll.

I made clothes for it, dressed it, took it down to Catholic Family Service and said, "Do you think you could find a child to give this to for Christmas?"

And she said, "Well, of course."

And so then my good friend, Betty Solis, who was the principal of Glenwood Elementary School, told me of a family that had 11 children and that I could maybe help them for Christmas.

I told her I'd like to do that.

So I found people to help me, my in-laws, my sister-in-laws, et cetera, and we provided Christmas for this family.

She said, "But there is one more family and one more family."

And that first year, unbeknownst to me, we had taken care of 43 children in her school.

It helped fill, for that small time, a void and it was that maybe I could put Christmas and joy in the hearts of somebody who wasn't going to have Christmas.

Just as Christmas ended, she and I each had boys at the same school in basketball.

It was a cold winter.

And so we, she and I were together in one car waiting for our sons to come out of basketball practice.

And she said, "Eveline, I have eight students that didn't come to school.

This January was so cold."

And I said, "Oh.

Flu or chickenpox?"

She said, "No.

They couldn't walk to school because they didn't have a coat."

Oh.

I came back to, remember I told you, I had sister-in-laws and brothers-in-laws.

And so I went to them and I said, "Look, Sally, if you will go to Dennis's closet, see if he has two coats.

If he does, show them both to him.

Said, 'Which is your favorite?'

And then say, 'Here is a coat that's not your favorite.

Could we give it to a child who doesn't have a coat?'"

And that's basically how my coat project started.

It was the givingness of it.

So the Christmas Project and the Coat Project started within six weeks of each other, but I didn't know it was going anywhere.

For three years, we took coats to Glenwood Elementary School.

We did Christmas for the children in Glenwood Elementary School.

And then God got hold of this thick skull of mine and turned the light bulb on that said, "Look, there are children in all of our schools."

So it began to grow.

And the Coat Project grew to where we were taking care of children in Amarillo and Bushland and Canyon and River Road and Highland Park.

And it's still, 45 years later, is still working.

We have never closed our doors.

We didn't close it during the COVID.

We just found a different way to help the children.

The Christmas Project, same thing.

It just continued to grow, continued to grow.

Finally, we figured out we have to have more space because you see, it was right in this house.

It got to where the cat didn't have a place to sleep.

With the help of grants and very kind people, we were able to purchase a 20,000 square foot storage building that the Storseths owned, and he was wonderful to us, that we were able to move in back at home.

And I thought, "We will never fill this up."

That happened.

We filled it up.

Giving was important and it gave the community a chance to give back as well.

We are in a very, very giving community.

You have to show them what your need is.

You have to let them understand that their giving is going to be a helping hand.

It could be monetary.

It could be the item that we need.

They would come through.

We were never let down.

Never.

I could not say that about our community at all.

I included my children.

I included my husband.

And so it wasn't like anybody was excluded.

They were part of it.

Remember, I was going to make beautiful wedding gowns.

This does not fit that path.

Back to working in the Christmas Project as we would box and wrap, and there would be 200 people there a night.

And so you'd say, "Okay, so what would you think could help this mom, this single parent mom?"

It always came back to one word.

Education.

(gentle music) Wayne and I were having dinner with close friends.

And my close friend, James, said, "I have an apartment building that I need to sell for my son.

He's moving to Austin and he owns this apartment building."

And so I looked at him, I have no idea why, and I said, "James, I'm interested in your apartment building."

And you know those bobble dolls that you see hanging in a car?

That was my husband's neck when he jerked his head around and looked at me and said, "What in the world are you gonna do with an apartment building?"

My thought was, if I could have an apartment building that we could furnish the apartments, we could put single-parent families in there.

Let the mom find out she's important to herself.

Build her confidence, go to school, get a college degree and be a role model for your children.

And we opened that apartment building when it was supposedly sold right away.

And then in January, after the Christmas Project was finished, I got a call from the realtor that said, "It's now on your plate.

You're going to get to have a chance at that apartment."

We have every name of everyone who has been in with us.

We call them our successes.

Whether they graduated with a two-year degree, whether they graduated with a four-year degree, whether we got them on the path of where they wanted to go and then something changed from us to another path, that's great.

But we got 'em started, and that's our objective.

We still continue to grow bigger and bigger and more things to do.

Let me back up just a hint.

I had some tough times and it ran in succession.

2001, my five-year-old granddaughter was kidnapped.

We got her back.

And so after we attacked our emotionals of that, the objective was, is get her stable.

And we as adults would deal with our emotions as best we could.

We got her back and we moved forward from there.

2003, my son died.

Rusty, Rusty was 35 when he passed away.

He had been on his own.

He had been in the Navy.

He lived here.

That was hard because we adopted him in order to give him love and attention and a family and growth, and then for that to be lost was hard.

That, I grieved, but I didn't grieve as hard as I did once it began to pile on.

2006, my dad died.

2009, my husband, after a hard, hard fight with cancer, died.

We fought it two years.

Back and forth to MD Anderson.

I would leave him there because his sister lived in Houston and she was retired so she would help get him to his appointments and I'd come home and work.

Then I'd catch a plane and I would fly down there and she and he would pick me up at the airport and I'd spend the weekend.

And then we though we were free.

And so we went for our year checkup and PET scan wasn't good to us.

He started chemo in August here and in December he said, "I'm not doing any more chemo, but we're going to make the bucket list."

And so we did.

January, February, March, April, May, June, we went all the way through the calendar and each month had something important we were going to get to do.

And he made it to June.

(gentle music) Grief is something you have to take one day at a time.

And at that point, I had a choice.

Eveline, you can pull the covers up, say, "No more," or you can get up, put your two feet on the ground and say, "There is somebody out there who needs me."

(telephone ringing) And so a former nun called me and she said, "Eveline, we here at hospice want you to come to grief counseling."

Mm-mm.

Nope, nope, nope.

So she did two more weeks of that and finally it was out of, "Okie doke.

I will just to please you, but I'm not sticking to this."

And the funny part about that is the first day I walked in, I looked right at her and I said, "I am never taking off my wedding rings.

I am never gonna date.

I am never gonna change my name."

I realized I had choices of standing on my own two feet and moving along or not, and I chose to continue.

And so our moving forward is seeing the Sunshine Cottage continue to grow, to expand, for moms to become more educated, more determined.

- As a single mom with three children, I know without a shadow of a doubt without this program that I would not have been able to complete my college degree.

- Eveline is excellent at coming alongside you and championing you for your success.

- And I wish that I would've had an opportunity like this where I was at, in the area that I was living at.

When you have the opportunity to be able to focus just on school and work and your child, it makes a difference.

- We want to see every single mom that comes to us get on their two feet.

As we put it, as a laughing matter, get on your big girl panties.

Come on, we've got things to do to make them become the people they want to be.

We would love to see their finish line.

But then again, we hope they never have a finish line.

They just continue.

I think motherhood is a role model.

You are going to teach the children around you, the next generation, your relatives, the wrong and right.

And you're going to do that by being an example.

And once you do that, then they can observe, Hopefully will pick up the good points.

There might be some questionable points and they can lay those aside.

And people have said, in fact, my own daughter said, "Mom, I don't think Dad would recognize you now."

And what she's saying is, "You have worked very hard to stand on your own two feet, make strong decisions," and that was just, that is a part of going through different phases of life.

So this is the Christmas room.

Christmas tree's probably been up 20 years anyway.

And it just is great.

It's my therapy.

If I had a hard day, I don't have to turn on the lights.

I don't have to talk to anybody particularly.

I just come in here and turn the lights on, know that I can calm down, that God's with me, and here's the grace and peace I needed for the day.

After Wayne passed away, I met a fabulous, fabulous man.

He was introduced as David, but I'm really good at shortening names, so Dave became Dave.

We did not know each other.

He had lost his wife.

I had lost Wayne.

And we became friends, good friends.

He became a very intricate part of keeping me moving.

He led me into becoming more confident in myself, make decisions, make the decisions you're proud of, that you can enjoy.

And so with that said, that is where I think I continued striving for the Sunshine Cottage to become stronger.

I got a phone call and she said it was a breast center.

"We have a shadow on your screen."

They went with me and they did another mammogram.

Then they did a needle biopsy and it was definitely there.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The blisters get in your throat and all of us who've had chemo understand that side effects are really tough sometimes.

The side effects were pretty, pretty strong.

But we got through it.

And so in March, they took the tumor itself and said all the margins were clear.

And he was very optimistic about that.

When that last treatment came about, I walked out from that radiation room and there was this long line of nurses and some doctors and my daughter and Dave and they had flowers and you ring the bell and that means you've done it.

You're a hero that has fought this disease and you're coming out on top.

And he had taken care of a wife for 10 years who had ALS.

And I thought, "He does not need anybody else to take care of."

And that's the same way I was with cancer.

I was fearful of that.

I didn't want him to have to go through life taking care of somebody else.

I just didn't feel like he deserved that.

Don't take anybody for granted.

Not anybody.

Love 'em because you don't know what tomorrow will bring.

My son called Allison, said, "Allie," and he was in Arkansas at the time, "Do you know anything about this guy that mom is seeing?"

She said, "I have no clue, but I do know he makes my mom laugh."

So that's how it started off.

We met on June 14th.

We married on June 14th.

My seven grandchildren all call me Gram.

And so Gram is the mother that puts the bandaid on and makes things better, says the right things or hugs you when the right things aren't right.

Sometimes I wondered if I was doing more than the time I should be giving to them, but they never said that to me.

They always were there.

They would come and box and wrap.

And even when they married and moved away, delivery day became important and they would come back.

And that's where I am today.

- [Reporter] After over 40 years of the Eveline Rivers Christmas Project, Eveline Rivers-McCoy and the rest of the board are concentrating only on the Eveline Rivers Coat Group.

- Where 20 or 30 years ago, we gave them soccer balls and coloring books and crayons and dolls and cars and trucks.

That need was not as strong now.

They wanted electronics and fancy things to wear.

And, you know, the things that you see is so important to a child.

So that's where we decided we would concentrate on the coats.

- [Interviewer] Growing up, you wanted to make clothes for people.

How does it feel now knowing that you've clothed thousands through the Coat Project?

- Wow.

That is a, that's a big question.

The blankets are, Melissa and I make these for the account that we have just to help our moms and children.

Anything that we sell here, which we love for the people to come and see, goes into a separate account, not our pay the bills.

This is to take care of things that our families need.

Whether that be for a school book that they need or listening to them because not all their tuition was taken care of or a child needs a new pair of shoes for a certain sporting event.

I think it is God's way of saying, "You didn't finish on the path you started, but you are on a path now."

2,500 coats approximately a year.

School system uses us very, very, very strongly.

We're blessed about that.

And there has never been a break.

46 years of constantly being there for any administrative staff who calls us, any daycare who calls us, any preschool who calls us.

We're there for them because it's for the child.

I think actually through all of this, all of my life, really, it came late.

It came after I met Dave.

Really.

There is a saying that we use.

"Nothing changes if nothing changes."

(gentle music)