Store closes; spirit won't dim

When Ruth Ann Young closed her Spirit of Christmas store in Kirkland Saturday, she assured fans and faithful customers who streamed through the doors to say goodbye that the store will return. High rent and tight retail space are just one more challenge for the 55-year-old Woodinville woman, described most frequently by friends as "amazing."

"I'm not amazing," she said. "I'm blessed."

For three years in a row, Young made certain other people's sons and daughters received holiday gift boxes through Operation Iraq: The Spirit of Christmas. With a cadre of volunteers, nearly 30,000 boxes were shipped to the military war zones. Young and the project received national media attention, along with hundreds of responses from grateful soldiers. Young never shared publicly that she was frantic over a son who has been missing since October 2004. She never mentioned that her husband has been struggling with health problems and undergoes kidney dialysis several days a week.

Finding another store

The grandmother of three expects that finding another store in Kirkland will be easy compared to finding a peaceful solution in Iraq. And while she wishes it won't be needed, Young plans that Operation Iraq: The Spirit of Christmas will return next holiday season.

"Closing the store temporarily enables me to spend more quality time with my husband," she said. "We still have a great time together, laughing and enjoying life."

It was her husband, Bob Young, who encouraged her to fulfill her dream of owning a Christmas store.

"My birthday is January 13," she said. "We lived in Michigan and my parents would ask me what I wanted to do for my birthday. It was always the same, go to the Christmas shop in Flint."

She opened Spirit of Christmas in October 1995. For the past 10 years, during the holiday season she provided horse-drawn-carriage rides through downtown Kirkland.

Smoke from a fire in a neighboring business damaged her merchandise in late June 2003 — too late to restock for the holidays. A few weeks later, Young received an e-mail from a high-school classmate serving in the military. Attached to the e-mail was a picture of a PX in Iraq.

"It was empty," Young said. "The shelves in the PX were empty and all those kids of ours were over there fighting."

The next morning she woke up at 5 a.m. inspired to use her retail space to pack a few boxes for soldiers in Iraq. The project grew as more donations and volunteers arrived. Operation Iraq: The Spirit of Christmas shipped 6,700 boxes that year to Kansas for an airlift to the Middle East. Each contained donated toiletries, snacks, books and magazines, CDs, letters from schoolchildren and Christmas cards from local residents.

Although Young's store was back in full retail operation in 2004, her son, Tor Bilet, and others insisted she continue the gifts-to-the-troops project. They found free space at Totem Lake Mall.

Bilet helped set up Operation Iraq and packed 700 boxes the first day. The next morning he left to visit a friend in Oregon. He apparently turned off Interstate 5 south of Chehalis, drove to Morton, Lewis County, and was last seen driving on a Forest Service road east of Mount St. Helens.

Official search

While coordinating Operation Iraq and running the store during its busiest season, Young and her family tried to find Tor.

Authorities in three counties worked together on the official search. Young and her daughter, Tricia Bock, posted hundreds of fliers. Young paid for a helicopter search. She hired a private detective.

There has been no trace of the young man, who would now be 22. His abandoned truck apparently was found by car thieves and dismantled.

Young planned to hold a memorial service last month, but then decided against it.

She thinks Tor either ran out of gas or had mechanical problems and that he began a walk that ended tragically.

"I know I should give up. I know he's probably dead, but I can't give up," she said. "I just can't."

With an ailing husband, a store to run and her grief and uncertainty over Tor near the surface, Young decided to skip Operation Iraq last holiday season. Then someone donated 9,000 serenity doves — sculpted metal decorations that "embody the flight of the human spirit."

"When someone gives you 9,000 doves, a donation worth $100,000, I knew Operation Iraq was meant to happen again," Young said.

She called volunteers who did the packing. If they would return, she would handle the logistics and seek the donations.

Volunteers returned by the carload. Two were Roxetta Groenen and Phyllis Settergren, both of Kirkland, who have served as captains each year. Groenen knew Young's challenges.

"Ruth Ann always directed attention to the project," said Groenen. "She didn't want any distractions about her son or her husband to get in the way of the message about packing the boxes for the troops."

Faith in the operation

In the end, it was Young's faith in the operation that made it a success. Enough money had been donated to mail 3,800 boxes. The rest, more than 5,000, sat.

Ten days before Christmas, "I was getting scared it wouldn't happen," she said.

Then Young recalled a contact she had made in 2004 when she flew to Washington, D.C., to receive a Raytheon Program Achievement Award for organizing Operation Iraq: The Spirit of Christmas.

She called the woman in D.C., who arranged an airlift from Fort Drum, N.Y., to the Middle East. A trucker loaded the boxes that Monday and delivered them at 3 a.m. Thursday, eight hours before the deadline.

The boxes arrived in time for Christmas.

"When I watched the truck pull out, I heard Tor's voice," Young said. "He said, 'You did good.' "

Sherry Grindeland: 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com