Boy Raises Thousands of Dollars for Community Storm Victims by Making 115 Baseball Bats

A 12-year-old boy from Iowa raised thousands of dollars for storm victims in his community by making and selling 115 baseball bats.

Tommy Rhomberg had raised thousands of dollars for those affected by a late summer derecho in his home state, coming up with a home run of an idea to use the funds from selling 115 baseball bats made from wood knocked down by the August storm, People Magazine reported.

Tommy came up with the idea to make the bats when he decided to give his friend a nice gift for his birthday. But when others wanted the handmade baseball bats, he came up with a different idea.

The first bat took ten hours for Tommy to make out of a tree branch that had fallen in his backyard during the derecho, which is a cluster of intense storms.

Once he began taking more orders, he received help from his grandfather and used a lathe to streamline the process. Tommy also promised that for every bat sold, $20 would be donated to The Greater Cedar Rapids Foundation Disaster Relief Fund.

“We got kind of lucky with the derecho. We didn’t have any damage, but just driving around town there were people with half their house destroyed, and I just wanted to raise money so we could help them, help people rebuild,” Tommy told CBS News. “I feel like it’s really helping people.”

CBS News reported that Tommy’s fundraising efforts had pulled together more than $2,500 for his community.

KGAN reported that orders for the bats came in from as far away as Connecticut and Arizona.

Tommy is not currently taking orders at the moment, but there is a possibility he will consider making more bats in the future.

The derecho hit the Midwest in late August, killing at least two people. It also destroyed millions of acres of crops and left hundreds of thousands of people with no power.