Auburn school collects stuffed animals for ‘cuddle drive’

: Cam Sturgis, left, and Anthony Seddon carry a full bag of stuffed animals as they help load them into a van at Fairview Elementary School in Auburn on Friday. Sturgis, an 11-year-old sixth-grader, and Seddon, a 10-year-old fourth-grader, helped collect the animals for a districtwide Cuddle Drive. “The response has been absolutely amazing,” said Auburn Middle School math teacher Doug Dumont, the event’s organizer. Dumont said that more than 5,000 stuffed animals have been collected for the Central Maine Medical Center Woman’s Hospital Association. Nurses at the hospital use them to calm and cheer stressed patients. They use about 3,000 per year and were running low. “When I started this, I was nervous because I did not know what the response would be,” Dumont said. When Dumont came to Fairview on the first of two pickup dates, he was overwhelmed and had to call his dad, Louis Dumont, for help. “We had them in the back seat, front seat, underneath the seats. It was stuffed,” Dumont said of the vehicle he used to transport the stuffed animals. Dumont said “stuffies” larger than 18 inches tall will go to the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray.