BEDFORD — Knights of Columbus Council 1166 just closed the main weekend of its 49th Tootsie Roll Drive and has already cleared more than $22,000. The buckets sat at Walmart, Rural King, Johnny Junxions, and Price Less IGA. The money stays in the county: Lawrence County Special Olympics, Lawrence County Arc, special-education classrooms at North Lawrence and Mitchell, and St. Vincent de Paul School.
There is another street collection November 7 at Main Street and Teke Burton Drive in Mitchell. Mail still works before then: Knights of Columbus Tootsie Roll Drive, 2202 M Street, Bedford, IN 47421. Greg Stanley chairs it.
This is not a new habit. It is the same men, the same candy, and the same cause for almost half a century.
How a Chicago Candy Drive Reached 16th Street
The official name is the Campaign for People with Intellectual Disabilities. Everybody still calls it the Tootsie Roll Drive because that is what you get for dropping a bill in the bucket.
It started in 1970 in the south suburbs of Chicago. A Knight named Raymond Berg had a child with intellectual disabilities and asked his council — Father C.C. Boyle Council in Tinley Park — to raise money for families like his. Another Knight had a connection at Tootsie Roll Industries, then based in Chicago. The first weekend brought in $30,000. Illinois picked it up. Then the rest of the country. There is no corporate partnership with the candy company. The Supreme Council has said as much. The candy is a thank-you, not a sponsor.
Bedford’s council started its own drive in 1978. By 2018 the local total had passed $363,000. By the eve of this year’s collection the Knights said the Bedford drive had put more than $500,000 into Lawrence County programs since that first year. Recent weekends have landed in a tight band: more than $32,000 in 2024, more than $20,000 in 2025, more than $22,000 so far in 2026. The Bedford Recreation Foundation has even cut a side check from the Claude Akins golf tournament to thicken the pot.
The money is not a slush fund. In past years it has bought furniture for a severe-disability classroom at Stalker Elementary, kitchen upgrades at the Arc so clients could learn food prep, and slots for Lawrence County athletes at the Special Olympics Summer Games. That is the difference between a charity photo and a program that still exists in January.
Who the Local Knights Are
Council 1166 is the Bedford council — Catholic men, parish-rooted, the kind of civic group that does not need a branding consultant. They work out of the same world as St. Vincent de Paul School, which is also on the beneficiary list. The drive chairman for years has been Greg Stanley. The volunteers are not only Knights. Special Olympics, Bedford Rotary, the Arc, Stone Belt, First Baptist, and school groups have stood at the doors with them.
That mix matters in a county this size. The Knights are a fraternal order founded in 1882 by Father Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, built on charity, unity, and fraternity. In practice here they are the men in the yellow vests who show up two days a year and then write the checks when the classrooms ask for what the regular budget will not cover.
They are not the only ones doing this kind of work. Rotary has its own calendar. Churches have theirs. What the Tootsie Roll Drive has that most fundraisers do not is fifty years of the same pitch in the same doorways. People know the vest. They know the candy. They know it is not going to Indianapolis.
Why the Quiet Ones Last
Lawrence County does not lack causes. It lacks the ones that survive a bad news cycle. A drive that has run since 1978, through school consolidations, hospital changes, and every commercial fad on John Williams, is doing something the ribbon-cuttings do not: it keeps sending money to the same kids and adults after the weekend is over.
November 7 in Mitchell is the last public ask of the 2026 campaign. If you missed the buckets this month, that intersection is the makeup date. Bring cash. The Tootsie Roll is not the point. The classroom that still has a working kitchen is.
No thoughts yet — be the first.