Give where it helps the most

Truckloads of clothes and food with expressions of sympathy and concern flooded the city after the tragedy. Children in far away classrooms drew pictures to decorate crates of clothes sent to the bereft. Volunteers flooded into the area offering medical, physical and financial help. Remnants of destroyed buildings disappeared into the backs of trucks, but the memories of that day lingered.
New York City after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? No. Arkadelphia, Arkansas, after the March 1997 tornado shredded a path through the business district.
My son, a college student in Arkadelphia at the time was one of the volunteers. He was amazed at the generosity of strangers who gave more than the city could use. His job as a volunteer was to sort through the donations, help get the useable items to charitable organizations to distribute and to trash extremely out-dated, inedible food. He brought home a hand drawn greeting from a second grade class.
The overflow of donations in New York City surpasses those he saw. In a New York City Fire Department warehouse, crates of mail – some containing cash donations – wait for someone to have time to open them. Paintings of the flag raising at Ground Zero, with eagles and angels soaring through the sky, congest the Fire Museum. No one quite knows what to do with the 343 eggs one man painted with the portraits of firemen who died in the tragedy. An endless supply of quilts and comforters are individually hung until soiled in the city fire stations.
As the Sept. 11 anniversary neared, the city braced itself for another onslaught from well-wishers. Recipients appreciated the gifts but wondered what to do with everything.
Across the border of a country where quilts, flag paintings and unopened envelopes stuffed with money await the attention of the city firemen is a place where children carried desperately needed, donated desks across the border to keep from spending money they did not have on an import tax on the desks. Tuesday, Mexican school children spent the day lugging 340 donated desks across the border at Nuevo Laredo. They needed the desks from the Rotary Club, but the Mexican government would not allow them the usual donation import exemption. Desks trucked into the country were subject to the import tax. Desks hand carried across the border had the import tax waived because the desks were valued at less than $150 a piece. So Tuesday the border police watched the parade of children carrying desks. One eighth grade boy alone reportedly carried seven desks across the border.
As we approach the anniversary of last year’s horror in the land of plenty, where the survivors were besieged with gifts and assurances of enough money to maintain their style of living, perhaps it would be as blessed to give memorial gifts to those with needs ignored by the mass media. Admittedly, the headlines are not as spectacular because the daily grind of poverty will never capture the attention of the masses, but the pain and need is just as real. When the urge to give hits, reach deep and then consider where it will really be most appreciated and used.
If you don’t mind the possibility of your donation sitting in the fire department’s warehouse, send that special something to New York. If you want to give and have your gift noticed and appreciated, then look around for the forgotten, the ignored and abandoned and then give without expecting anything in return, not even recognition.
If you really want to commemorate the firemen who died in last year’s horror, remember why they rushed into the burning buildings, and gave the ultimate gift. They went where people needed what they had to give: Their training, experience and equipment. Give, not because you will be praised, or noticed but because you have what another desperately needs and you are willing to give to meet that need.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)


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