Deliverers go gathering
ELYRIA - The drill is the same most days for letter carriers: Walk or drive the route and fill mailboxes with bills, magazines and other items.
But not this weekend. This weekend, the hope is for letter carriers to drop off the mail and walk away with an abundance of food in its place.
Saturday marks the 17th Annual National Association of Letter Carriers national “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive. This year, the need for people to be generous is more critical than ever.
“We`re usually able to fill the shelves at the Salvation Army where the food would last till Thanksgiving, but this year they`re nearly bare,” said Bill Rolfe, who heads the 130 letter carriers who deliver mail to several area cities out of the Elyria post office. “They told us they`ll be doing good to make it through the summer.”
The area`s ongoing economic struggles have put added pressure on Salvation Army centers in Elyria and Lorain, and food banks including Second Harvest that are trying to feed families coping with layoffs, fewer hours of employment or not being able to find work.
“It`s taking a lot of food for them to keep going in the economic conditions we`re in,” Rolfe said.
As postal carriers make their rounds Saturday in Elyria, North Ridgeville, Grafton, Oberlin and Wellington, they`ll be looking for donations of nonperishable food left on doorsteps or by mailboxes.
“The majority of people put it in plastic bags, but we actually have some who put out cardboard boxes of food,” Rolfe said. “Sometimes we`re making two trips to drag it back to the truck.”
Not that he`s complaining.
Rolfe said he can always count on a number of the branch`s 50-odd retirees to help out.
“They`ll come in, and we`ll also put management to work doing physical labor that day to help pick everything up,” he said.
As letter carriers pick up food donations, retirees and managers will help carry bags and boxes of food back to their own vehicles to be transported to Elyria`s Salvation Army. That way, the mail won`t be delivered late Saturday, according to Rolfe.
Any donations will be gratefully accepted, but letter carriers ask that items not be donated in glass containers if possible.
“If they do, we`ll do the best we can,” Rolfe said.
Last year, the drive produced some 73 million pounds of food nationwide, and 90,000 pounds of food was collected by postal carriers in Elyria, North Ridgeville and southern Lorain County.
In Lorain, donations will go to the Salvation Army center on Broadway, while food collected in the Amherst area will go to Second Harvest Food Bank.
“Food collected from the drive last year in Lorain normally lasts till Christmas, but it only lasted a couple of months,” said Nancy Toth, a health educator with the Lorain Health Department.
Toth said the demand for food was so great during 2008 that families were receiving just one bag instead of the two normally given to each household.
Food collected Saturday also will help feed hungry children during summer months when free breakfasts and subsidized lunches aren`t available at schools.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.
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Filed by May 8th, 2009 in Top Stories.
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