Letter carriers Stamp Out Hunger

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By Thomas Geyer | Saturday, May 10, 2008 11:15 PM CDT | () comments

The 16th annual Stamp Out Hunger! food drive put on by the National Association of Letter Carriers on Saturday reported a 27 percent increase over items collected last year.

Picking up canned goods and non-perishable food items from all their stops, the letter carriers collected 73,777 pounds of food and are giving River Bend a much needed replenishment.

It couldn’t come at a better time, said Tom Laughlin, executive director of the River Bend Foodbank.

“This comes about six months from the Student Hunger Drive,” Laughlin said. “It comes at a time when donations are lower. But you can never have enough food.”

When needs are greatest, Quad-City residents respond, he added. And they responded again this year.

Laughlin said the need at this time of year arises when school is out because underprivileged children who normally are part of a reduced cost or free lunch program at school are now out of school. That daily dose of nutrition must be replaced.

“We’ll see an increase in demand at the food pantries to fill that void,” Laughlin said.

About 40 percent of the food bank’s recipients are children in single-family homes where the mother is the head of the household, he said.

“So many of the people who rely on the charity programs really are living hand-to-mouth,” he said.

The bottom line is, he said, there are always hungry people who need food.

On the dock behind the post office on West 2nd Street in Davenport, the food poured as carriers returned from their routes.

Looking over the dock and at the pallets already full by 3 p.m., letter carrier Brenda Quinlan was pleased. “I think we’re on par for where we were last year,” she said.

Quinlan, who has headed the local program for the past five years, said she did a lot more this year to get the word out.

“We did a lot more advertising this year,” she said. “They even let me get yard signs this year. And I wrote a lot of letters to businesses and places that have those electronic marquee signs asking if they’d let us advertise the food drive.”

She even wrote to the high schools for volunteers, about 15 to 20 of whom showed up from Davenport Assumption High School.

Jordon Paxton, 16, a junior at Assumption, said he and his fellow students helped the letter carriers collect the food and then helped get it properly packed in boxes that were placed on pallets. Once full, the pallets were loaded onto a semitrailer.

“This is our final for religion class,” Paxton explained.

Danny Jacobs, 17, a junior, said that they are taking “a social justice class for which you have to get so many service hours.”

So instead of just doing something individually, this group of students did a group project, which was the food drive.

As he watched the food arrive, postal supervisor Jim Rangel nodded his head.

“I’m impressed with the way people are giving,” he said. “Given the inflation and the state of the economy and gasoline prices, they’re still giving.”

Laughlin said that when the River Bend Foodbank opened in 1982, about 200,000 pounds of food was delivered to area pantries to feed the hungry.

“Last year, we distributed 4.4 million pounds of food,” he said, adding that each year the need is growing.

The food brought in by the postal carriers will see the food bank through the summer, he said.

Thomas Geyer can be contacted at (563) 383-2328 or tgeyer@qctimes.com.