New Haven Independent

Three firemen arrived at the Truman School early Friday morning to help celebrate Three Kings Day, which falls on Saturday this year and is a school holiday.

Second-grader Jacoby Jones received his gift from Balthazar, aka Jose Maldonado (pictured above) of Engine Company 6 on Goffe Street, who has been participating in the firefighters’ Three Kings Day Celebration for four of the five years it has been going on.

Gaspar, aka Firefighter Angel Aviles of Engine 17 on East Grand, was delighted to give a gift to kindergartner Anselle Huertas. “I still celebrate Three Kings with my kids, ” he said, explaining that many Latino families begin celebrating Christmas on the 25th of December, and then finish up with putting hay in the kids’ shoes or in boxes beneath the bed on Three Kings Day. The kings, arriving, of course, on very hungry camels, will be pleased with the meal for their livestock and will therefore leave a particularly nice gift. “Three Kings,” Aviles said, “is like a great supplement to Christmas.”

Julio Padilla, or rather Melchior, was pleased to give his gift to Shanaya Matthews, a Truman second-grader. Padilla, when he is not being a king, works out of Engine Company 10 on Lombard Street. He knows the holiday well. A five-year veteran of the department, he also has five kids, which is a lot of hay under the bed. (Full disclosure: the firefighters admitted to not being sure which king each was representing, but it seemed to make little difference to the appreciative kids or the delighted adults.)

“It’s really an educational and community service event,” explained Assistant Drill Master Rene Cordova, president of the association (uniformed in the photo, with very festive Truman School principal Dr. Evelyn Robles, and flanked by firefighters, left to right, Lt. Felipe Cordero, Vince Hall, and in the middle, an unrobed Padilla), “because a lot of kids don’t know the meaning of the holiday. Now they do.”

Three Kings Day is one of three community service functions that the New Haven Hispanic Firefighters Association has been sponsoring annually, he said, since the group’s founding in 2001. In June they provide two $1,000 scholarships to New Haven high school students, and at Thanksgiving they sponsor a holiday meal for adults. All these activities, including the 619 gifts (!), are funded by the firefighters, with assistance from the union local.

And you don’t have to be Hispanic, Lt. Cordero explained, in order to belong or to be a supporter. Twenty-year veteran Lt. Jeff Baskin and Firefighter Shemica Lloyd (pictured), a five year veteran and one of only twelve women on a force of 327, were on hand to give assistance in providing the right gift.

The event was a lot more complicated to organize than the original kings’ offering of gold, myrrh, and frankincense to a single baby. But kids like Dariana Mendez (on the left) and Michelle Flores, in Jocelyn Fuentes’s bilingual pre-K heartily approved and waited expectantly and patiently as the kings and their helpers had the kids come up by grade. Then the gifts “” a wide and thoughtful variety of dolls, books, board games, among others things “” were presented appropriately by age and gender, with a sit on a king’s lap or a firefighter’s hug optional.

Feliz Dia De Reyes!