Hampton Roads to Haiti

The 7.0 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12 brought world-wide attention to the beautiful – and often troubled – nation of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Even before that, thousands of people in Hampton Roads – through their churches and nonprofit groups -- have been connected to our neighbor in the Caribbean. Now a strong military presence in the disaster relief effort strengthens the connection between Hampton Roads and Haiti. This blog dates back to April 2009 when Pilot editor Nancy Young tagged along with a Catholic missionary group to Haiti and has since visited the country five times. In January, Pilot military reporter Corinne Reilly and photojournalist Steve Earley traveled to Haiti with the amphibious assault ship Bataan and their posts and photographs describing earthquake relief efforts are still available. Look here, and in The Virginian-Pilot, for ongoing updates.

Category: Mission

■ 22 April 2010 | 9:52 AM

Earth Day in Haiti

From Nancy Young

This morning I made my orange juice from concentrate.

That's because of Haiti.

It’s been exactly a year since I went to Haiti for the first time – I spent Earth Day there last year, though it didn’t occur to me then. Haiti is the perfect place for Earth Day, a paradoxically utterly beautiful and environmentally devastated.

The first time I took a walk in Port-au-Prince I saw ravines that served as the front yards of the poor. And lining the ravines, melting into the slope, was trash. Not official landfills, just nowhere else to put it.

It was the first time I became truly conscious of trash. I actually brought mine home with me because I felt like it would hurt people less here. The garbage guy comes to my house and takes it away. Out of sight, out of mind…except, not really. Haiti has a way of showing me that my illusions of protection are, well, illusions.

Haiti is one of the world’s canaries in the coal mine – this is what happens when you don’t take care of the earth, this is what happens when you sacrifice the many for the benefit of a greedy few, this is what happens when you take too much and don’t give enough back.

High falutin’, mostly ineffectual thoughts in my hands, I’m afraid. The only concrete thing I can say I’ve changed is that I make less trash.

It started several months ago, inadvertently, with making orange juice from those concentrate cans that my mom used to use when I was little. It’s been a couple of decades since cartons of “not-from-concentrate,” with its illusion of fresh squeezed juice, became the norm.

I first bought the cans because they were cheaper – and Haiti has made me feel sheepish about paying more for illusions of fresh squeezed. But the main reason became that they make for less trash than a carton with those plastic spouts.

I use four cans of water, rather than the recommended three, to make it last longer. I shut the faucet off in between cans.

I’ve noticed, too, I tend not to waste food – I finish the loaves of bread, even if they’re a little stale, and cartons of milk instead of throwing half-finished spoiled ones out, which I did regularly before...which is kind of amazing to me now.

And, I’ve pretty much stopped eating frozen dinners, which used to be a staple. It was always a goal, they have too much salt, homemade’s better and less expensive, yada, yada, yada.

But, since Haiti, I’ve felt bad putting all that packaging, those plastic compartmentalized trays, in the trash. I feel like I may as well be flinging them into the ravines where people are trying to live – really makes it difficult to enjoy my Lean Cuisines.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten good at making diri ak pwa – Haitian rice and beans – with fresh garlic and onion. The other day I made some fish with lime and pike pimon (hot peppers) and dreamed of the beach, and the mountains you can see from the sea, and the pwason fre (fresh fish) of Haiti.

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■ 06 April 2010 | 10:53 AM

A coloring book in Haiti

From Nancy Young

I was catching up on my reading over the weekend and came across Janbatis ak Jozyann Refé.

Which, with my rudimentary Haitian Creole, translates as: Janbatis and Jozyann Get Well.

It’s the story of a boy and a girl living in the Haitian countryside. They get sick with a common parasite and the doctor gives them a pill to make the parasite go away so they can get better and play.

Then Jozyann and Janbatis learn how to prevent becoming sick with the “worm” again. Washing their hands, wearing shoes, using the latrine, keeping animals out of the house – even the very cute goat that’s always by their side.

“It seems so simple, but it’s not,” said Jean Mackay Vinson, a children’s author in Virginia Beach who penned the story to go along with illustrations by Beach artist Dawn Stephens. The Haitian Creole translation was done by Marie Helene Hall.

Janbatis ak Jozyann Refé is a coloring book – probably the first one the Haitian kids it’s headed for have ever gotten. It’s meant to go along with an anti-parasite program by Operation Blessing International (www.ob.org) in conjunction with the Haitian ministry of health, and Holy Family Catholic Church in Virginia Beach. Holy Family helped to give out the medicine (which costs pennies per child to cure them) in their twin Haitian parish of Batis late last year.

Jean said the day the coloring books were printed was the day of the earthquake. It seemed like maybe one little coloring book wasn’t so important given the enormity of the disaster.

But, of course, it’s as, or even more, important now. For one thing, parasites made a lot of kids sick before the earthquake and there’s no reason to think they would go away just because there was a tragedy of historic proportions. Parasites aren’t understanding that way.

In fact, that problem, like many, is bound to become worse because of the even greater lack of sanitation with the destruction of already inadequate infrastructure.

And, kids are still kids. They still need to have fun, they still need to play. Maybe more than ever because there’s so much grief and hardship surrounding them.

There’s no denying coloring books are fun. I was tempted to color the one Jean and Dawn loaned me, but I kinda figure I should give it back so that an actual kid could color it.

Dawn said that when Jean first approached her about doing the illustrations she was thinking it would be a quick project – both were doing the work as volunteers – but it turned out to be more complicated.

Originally, the goat was to be a human-like character, dancing and playing with the kids, but they learned that was more likely to be frightening than cute and funny to the Haitian kids.

So, the goat’s still there, on every page (he makes me smile), he’s just doing goat things – including, by the end, staying outside the house so the kids don’t get the worm again.

Also, Dawn first drew a picket fence around Janbatis and Jozyann’s house. But they don’t generally have picket fences in Haiti, so, back to the drawing board. After doing some research on the internet, she settled on a more realistic cactus fence.

One of the main goals was to teach the kids, and their parents, that the medicine they were getting wasn’t causing the worm, it was getting rid of it.

At first, that may seem like the people there are backward, but then I’m reminded, with some embarrassment, of the time I thought I was bleeding internally because of a common, benign side effect of Pepto Bismal. I just needed some education – and that’s all they need too. This is unfamiliar medicine.

A thornier problem, and one Jean and Dawn wrestled with, is how to teach about hygiene, which is the way to prevent the parasite from taking hold in the first place. That’s not just a problem of education, it’s one of resources.

Yes, you can say you should wear shoes – but what if you don’t have shoes? You should use the bathroom, but what if you don’t have a bathroom ? You should wash your hands, but what if you don’t have clean water?

With such extreme poverty, the answers are not going to be perfect until the people have what they need -- but you do what you can. In the case of the kids of Batis, they now have clean water thanks to the pipeline project you’ve read about here last year.

The 2,500 copies printed the day of the earthquake are still waiting to be colored in by the kids of Batis – that will most likely happen in the early summer when the next round of medicine is given out.

Janbatis and Jozyann’s story is not Jean and Dawn’s first coloring book for children in faraway lands. The first was a Spanish translation of their children’s book “Little Tucker Two Sticks” which Jean took with her to the Dominican Republic on a church mission.

You can see Lillie and Antony, who are Dominican, enjoying coloring their books here.

“They color it and they make it their own,” Jean said.

Jean said Jozyann's and Janbatis' story has since been translated into Spanish to help the kids in the DR.

Spoiler alert, I’m going to give away the ending. Here’s the last page. The kids are healthy, they’re playing – even the goat can’t resist a little jig.

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■ 05 April 2010 | 9:55 AM

Mindbending juxtaposition 1,000,001 -Katie Couric and the iPad in Haiti

From Nancy Young

I was just reading my Google alerts on Haiti and saw that Katie Couric had tweeted yesterday that she was on her way there.

And then there was a second tweet of her just before leaving for Haiti. It had a picture of her looking perky even for her and gloriously in love with her new iPad.

I'm not sure how you keep both thoughts in your brain: on my way to a humanitarian disaster zone where there is unending suffering and

Hey, check out the iPad!

I'm also reminded of the first time I learned that no one likes a humorless old fart. I was 17ish in a debate in English class over soap operas. I argued, earnestly, that even though I watched them sometimes, we'd all be better off without them because our minds and hearts should be engrossed by such things as how to save the world...or at least reading a good book.

I lost, badly, to the side who argued that soap operas were fun and therefore an unmitigated good.Even the English teacher, who was trying to get us to enjoy the classics and the wonders of poetry, looked at me blankly when I made my case.

So I don't want to deprive Katie or anyone of their iPad -- and when I sign off here maybe I'll check out what the latest offerings are on Hulu.

I know that Couric won't be walking around the camps of the homeless showing off her iPad, particularly not if it's raining. She's good natured and she's got a good sense of humour, so she might lift some spirits.

And the greater good of her going there, I'm sure, is to keep Haiti in the news and to let people know that almost three months out from when the earthquake (or, as my friends in Haiti call it, "the problem") struck...and the situtation is still dire.

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■ 30 March 2010 | 9:22 AM

What are you going to do in Haiti?

From Nancy Young

Jaffelin stares at me every day. What are you going to do?

She’s four, maybe she’s five now, but she looks tough here in the way of really smart people who see right through you.

In this picture in December her serious expression might have something to do with that in about 20 minutes she’d be sleeping in my arms, sniffling with what may have been the start of a cold.

She needed a nap.

I met Jaffelin on the beach, what I like to think of as “my” beach, just up the road from Caberet. She is the daughter of Franso, who speaks five languages and makes his living from the rowboat we’re in here, and his wife, who my feminist side of me is ashamed to say I know only as Madame Franso. Madame Franso has a beautiful smile and bright eyes, like her daughter. She runs the little stand on the public beach where I bought my Coke – and sometimes a little rum – to go along with the fresh fish her mother, who also worked on the beach, got for us.

I still don’t actually know if any of them are OK after the earthquake, but I’ve heard that the area around the beach was far enough from Port-au-Prince to largely escape serious damage.

And so I have good reason to hope that the little girl staring back at me is alive, though also I suspect that both her dad’s and mom’s businesses were hit hard by the earthquake. That all of their lives got even harder.

What are you going to do? That’s what Jaffelin’s picture is challenging me.

And I look back and say, I don’t really know. I’m sorry.

The other day I read a story in The New York Times about how business is booming in the pricey restaurants of Port-au-Prince, where diners feast on lamb chops from New Zealand while within eyeshot the residents of tent cities – more likely bedsheet cities – struggle to get enough to eat, to keep clean and to stay dry in the rainy season.

How did those no-doubt delicious and tender lamb chops successfully make their way from New Zealand when actual tents for most of the earthquake’s homeless nearby still haven’t?

I closed the story and Jaffelin’s picture popped up on the screen. What are you going to do?

One of the popular restaurants for the so-called “elites” and frequented by the workers of the United Nations and foreign NGOs is called La Plantation.

Haiti was the first country to abolish slavery, the first truly free and independent republic in the Western Hemisphere (not us, because we had slaves). Its founding fathers were former slaves.

And now, 200 and some years later, someone thought La Plantation would be a swell name for a restaurant.

The difficulty with Haiti is that it is living evidence that we have not overcome our history, that we are still a let-them-eat-cake world. I’ll be thinking of that as I follow what happens at a donor conference to help Haiti at the U.N. on Wednesday. There will be a lot of rhetoric and promises, but time will only tell what else.

And when I click off the internet, there will be this smart little girl sizing me up from her father’s rowboat about just what I’m going to do to make sure that she has all the opportunities in the world she deserves.

Time will only tell that too.

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■ 15 March 2010 | 10:37 PM

12 pens in Haiti

From Nancy Young

Before my first flight to Haiti last April, I realized I didn’t have any pens, which is a stupid thing for a journalist to forget.

So I went to a shop at the Miami airport and bought two at 3 bucks a pop.

The pricey pens quickly ran out of ink and I went to one of the roadside stands in Belladere, Haiti, picked a pen out of a bin, held it up in one hand and held a U.S. 1 dollar bill in the other.

The woman working at the stand shook her head and said something very fast in Creole. Or it might have been very slow in Creole. Didn’t matter. I didn’t know Creole.

So I just held up the pen and the dollar again and smiled. Like an idiot. Then I started to get out another dollar in case the first one wasn’t enough.

But it was the opposite problem. She finally took my dollar, gave me 12 pens and some Haitian goudes as change. She was probably asking me in Creole if I had anything smaller than a U.S. $1.

Every time one of those pens, yellow Bics with blue caps, pops up, I think of her. She’s probably OK – Belladere is up in the countryside and was not damaged in the earthquake – but she probably lost loved ones in Port-au-Prince, probably has taken relatives into her home even if there is no room.

Monday night, I went to a Haitian awareness event organized by medical students at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

When I first sat down, I scribbled on my notepad to test my pen. It didn’t work. I ran out to my car to find another.

There, under some papers was a yellow Bic.

The speakers at the event, all doctors, have all been to Haiti, helped in Haiti, before the earthquake and after.

Here is some of what I wrote down with one of the Haitian woman’s 12 pens.

“We got on the ground in Haiti and we had no idea where to go. We were told to try and find some space at the airport.”

“’We need help’ This signage was literally on every single corner.”

“Haitians are... impeccably kind.”

“The six-year-old refused to come out unless we promised to get his 11-year-old sister out first.”

“The children. No water. 3 floors down. Seven days.”

“They’re going to need a lot of help for a very long time.”

“This little boy survived...others didn’t. Five people died while we were there. Two women, two babies and a five year old. The net was to keep the flies off him.”

“I have never seen so much suffering in my entire life and I’ve been all over the world.”

“Go out and start taking care of people.”

“Humbled by the enormity...just so many things to do.”

“Family of six living under a king-sized bed sheet.”

“Late infections. This is going to go on for a very long period of time.”

“They get up every day. sweep the dust off the dirt...It’s just amazing.”

“We’ve seen nowhere near the bottom, anything you can do to help...”

“A lot of the doctors, most of the nurses, died.”

“You grieve and think about this weeks after because, in the moment. you do what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“The world is a big place and there is so much need, just go out and look...We need all of you. Haiti just opened a different page.”

And this last quote, from Dr. Alfred Abuhamad of EVMS, who was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, is about the little boy you’ve seen in the blog before.

The boy was taken to a hospital in Cange up in the countryside after sustaining severe head injuries in the earthquake at Port-au-Prince. In the days afterwards, in this picture, he seemed likely to die. He's pictured with Dr. Lisbet Hanson of Virginia Beach, who was also in Haiti during the earthquake.

Two months later: “He’s doing quite well.”

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■ 03 March 2010 | 10:28 PM

Va. Beach search and rescue team to be honored

Members of Virginia Task Force Two wait Jan. 15, 2010 before boarding military flights to Haiti at Norfolk Naval Station. The urban search and rescue team was mobilized late Wednesday night to find earthquake victims in Haiti. (Ross Taylor | The Virginian-Pilot)

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. will honor members of the Virginia-based search and rescue teams that worked in Haiti after the earthquake.

The teams, from Virginia Beach and Fairfax County, included more than 150 people and rescued a total of 19 survivors.

A delegation of 10 people from each of the teams will attend the ceremony with Warner Friday, a news release from the senator’s office said.

Following the ceremony, the two delegations will get a special White House tour.

-Lauren King

Members of the Virginia Task Force 2 Urban Search and Rescue Team carry Jens Christensen, from Denmark, a United Nations worker who was just pulled from the collapsed United Nations headquarters building to a temporary clinic in Port-au- Prince, Jan. 17, 2010. Workers had been trapped in the building for days since the deadly earthquake which killed thousands and left the city in ruins. (Julie Jacobson | The Associated Press)

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■ 24 February 2010 | 10:51 AM

Counting crutches and blessings

From Nancy Young

Twenty-five years ago, in January, I had a cyst removed from the base of my spine. I was 18, a college freshman.

The cyst was bigger than expected so I was in the hospital for six days instead of one, most of them spent bored silly with a woman in her 60s who liked to watch bowling and who continually warned me of the dangers of “adhesions” forming around my scar.

They would haunt me forever, she said. I appreciated that she meant well, but I couldn’t wait to get away from her.

After winter break, I went back to school, learning how to sit precariously on the edge of my thigh in the hard wooden chairs of the psych and English classes I was taking. The alternative was following my mother’s suggestion and taking one of those donut seat cushions with me to class – which was, of course, a horrifying image to my teenage mind.

Twenty-five years later, every once in a while, it still hurts. Just a little ache, a reminder of this relatively minor surgery – and a reminder how the body doesn’t quite ever forget anything you do to it.

On Monday, I went to a crutch-packing “party” at the Physicians for Peace (www.physiciansforpeace.org) warehouse in Norfolk. They were getting ready to send the first shipment of 1000 pairs of donated crutches to go to Haiti for amputees or other people with limb injuries.

Gail Grisetti, a physical therapist from ODU, was there and she was in Haiti just recently, volunteering with a group organized by Operation Smile, Physicians for Peace and ODU.

Gail was at a hospital in Hinche, in the central plateau, maybe 70 miles from Port-au-Prince. The patients there, many of them with amputations and broken bones, had been lying in bed for three weeks or more. This, in itself, made them among the luckier of the earthquake victims, because they’re in a clean, safe place.

But some still needed casts for their broken bones. Gail said there was one little girl with both legs broken, sitting straight up in bed, dressed perfectly, hair done up, a big smile for passersby, patiently waiting for her casts. She and her family never complained.

In fact, the trick for Gail was how to convince Haitians, who are completely devoted to their kids and family, that sometimes the best way to help the injured is to have them move their own damaged limbs, to use their own strength.

So you not only have had people who were lying in bed, but whose family members had been moving, lovingly, every muscle for them.

But, most of us know by now that one of the best things for recovery is to move around when you can.

If you’ve got a broken leg, if you’ve got a missing leg, moving around is hard to do without support, without crutches.

And there aren’t enough crutches in Haiti right now – Gail said they asked a local carpenter in Hinche to make some, which I love because that gives him a paying job, which there also aren’t enough of in Haiti (and never have been. Even before the earthquake more than 2/3 of the people lacked a formal job.)

But they still need more and that’s where this first shipment of crutches – donated by lots of good people here in Hampton Roads and elsewhere – is headed.

Gail said the amputees are in that bridge period between when they have lost the limb and when their bodies can handle a prosthesis – which are also being sent by Physicians for Peace.

The amputees need exercise, they need rehab, so they can get around in the beautiful, but very tough mountainous terrain of Haiti. It’s ground that’s still moving by the way – on Monday and Tuesday there were 4.7 magnitude earthquakes near Port-au-Prince.

It’s a long hilly road and they’re just at the start. I think of this girl who was in the hospital in Cange, in the days after the earthquake (photo thanks to Dr. Lisbet Hansen of Virginia Beach) and who lost her foot.

I really wish the worst thing she had to face was a bowling fanatic for a hospital roommate and a little discomfort while getting to go to college.

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■ 19 February 2010 | 8:53 AM

Hot chocolate, college and rain in Haiti

From Nancy Young

I was watching a morning talk show when the hosts started talking about the weather, how cold and snowy it’s been recently and how hard it is to cope.

It was a segue into a friendly feature about hot beverage ideas, because, as they said, hot chocolate’s great but it gets boring after a while.

I felt a little piece of my brain cleave right off.

The disparities between Haiti and here -- particularly since the earthquake but even before -- are often mind-bending for me. I feel like I need a whole second brain to take them in – an unlikely occurrence, so maybe I’d be better off focusing on how to get out of a hot chocolate rut. There is comfort in knowing that a problem, any problem, can be solved by chai.

But then I think of my friends in Haiti – like Peterson, a young college student who was living in Port-au-Prince working toward a computer science degree. Since the earthquake, he has moved back to the countryside with his family, away from the earthquake zone, his college plans indefinitely delayed.

Even before the quake, things were unimaginably hard – with more than two thirds of the country out of a formal job. Several months ago, I asked Peterson what he wanted to do when he graduated and he told me that when you’re Haitian, you learn not to make plans. Recognizing the naiveness of the question, he smiled a little to make it easier for me to hear the answer.

Since the quake, I’ve tried to get the message to him not to give up hope of college, but I think I just sound like a chirpy morning talk show host offering him chai. Instead, he is trying to buy a motorcycle to give taxi rides to help support his mom, brother ,grandfather along with some young cousins who lost their home in the earthquake.

Then I read about the heavy rains this week in Port-au-Prince and know that the Haitians too are talking about the weather – up to their ankles in muddy water.

Because it’s not even the rainy season yet – that starts next month -- when every afternoon and night you can count on a torrential downpour. Not so bad when you were a guest like I was, tucked in at a hotel, drinking a Coke. I was always protected in Haiti. But, outside, people regularly were swept up in the flooding.

And now pretty much everyone’s outside, afraid to sleep in buildings that could still collapse. Maybe protected only by sheets that are serving as makeshift tents. The real tents that are needed haven’t yet come in anywhere near the numbers that will provide protection to the people trying to cope.

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■ 17 February 2010 | 9:09 AM

Touching Haiti

From Nancy Young

I was just going through the pictures that Dr. Lisbet Hanson of Virginia Beach gave me of the days following the earthquake in Haiti.

These two were not the ones I was looking for.

But one made me sad, the other made me smile – and with both I reached out to my laptop to touch their foreheads.

That seems to be my reflex with pictures of Haitians these days. Ineffectual, yeah – but it still makes me feel like I’m touching Haiti.

These pictures were taken in a hospital in Cange, about 45 miles and two hours of rough roads from Port-au-Prince. At first light the day after the earthquake, the injured made their way there to be treated. That included the families of these little boys.

The little boy with the heavily bandaged leg is probably an amputee now. He came to Cange with the skin scraped off of much of that leg and someone in Port-au-Prince had carefully wrapped it for his trip to the Zanmi Lasante (www.pih.org) hospital in Cange.

But underneath the bandage an infection had taken hold and he was on his way to the Dominican Republic where there were more facilities to take care of him. Dr. Hanson, an OB-GYN who was at Cange for a training seminar when the earthquake struck, said that it was unlikely they would be able to save the little boy’s leg – but likely that they could save his life.

So that picture makes me sad, but also gives me hope that the boy is alive and well and in considerably less pain than he is in this photo.

Now, the other little boy, you can tell, not a thing wrong with him. He was waiting for a family member who was being treated. Chomping on a cracker, too much energy to stay in his seat, telling a story I wish I could hear.

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■ 11 February 2010 | 8:47 AM

A hug from Haiti

From Nancy Young

Like most of us, Becky Bradshaw of Suffolk had never given much thought to Haiti, or to the difficulties people who have lost a limb face.

That changed when she saw a plea from Physicians for Peace (www.physiciansforpeace.org) on television the week after the earthquake asking for donations of prosthetics, crutches, manual wheelchairs, walkers – anything to help amputees get around.

There were already many amputees in Haiti before the earthquake – an estimated 7 percent of the population had some form of physical disability.

Now the needs are almost incalculable. Even a month later, we probably have not seen the end of it yet because what the earthquake itself did not take, infection, of even relatively minor wounds, will.

So, incalculable. Overwhelming.

Becky Bradshaw, though, heard of the need and thought of the crutches in the attic leftover from her kids’ benign childhood injuries. She thought of the walker her mother, who lived to 101, used before she died.

“I thought, you know, they need to be used,” Becky said.

She thought of the few people, just like her kids, just like her mom, who could be helped to get around.

That’s where it started. It wasn’t enough.

“God worked on me all night. I did not sleep. I was tumbling and tossing and asking, ‘How am I going to do this?’”

By morning, it was a matter of figuring out the practicalities. Calling Physicians for Peace. Finding a place to store any donations. Getting the word out.

She was focusing on Suffolk and the Western Tidewater area, making it more convenient for folks there to give. She set up a collection point at Suffolk Christian Church in downtown Suffolk, where she’s a deacon.

Earlier this week, Ken Hudson, who manages in-kind gifts for Physicians for Peace, came by with a truck. It wasn’t big enough. He has to go back. There were a bunch of manual wheelchairs – and whatever Becky collects next – still to pick up.

Before the quake, Ken said he primarily dealt with equipment suppliers and health care organizations – and the occasional individual with something to donate. Since Jan. 12, he has seen many more individuals, like Becky, getting involved.

“I can’t tell you how many Beckies there are out there” across the country, Ken said. Probably 80 percent of the equipment at the Physicians for Peace warehouse at 2117 Springfield Ave. in Norfolk (near the old Ford plant) was donated since the earthquake, Ken said.

“It’s massive. It’s a huge collection.” They are still accepting donations at the warehouse and at locations across the country. Go to (www.physiciansforpeace.org) to find out more.

Becky’s efforts have expanded far beyond what she envisioned that sleepless night a few weeks back. She has many stories of the good people who have helped.

There’s the woman in Courtland who gave Becky her deceased husband’s artificial legs, walker, wheelchair and crutches. Becky went out there on one of those snowy days we seem to be having so much of lately.

As she was carrying the donations from the house, Becky could see that while the woman felt she was doing the right thing, it was still difficult because the prosthetics, the walker, the wheelchair, these had all been a part of her husband.

So Becky asked if she minded if she gave her a hug.

“This is from all the people who will benefit from what you have done.”

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