Special delivery: 60 tons of sustaining generosity
Food left at mailboxes replenishes shelves for county food bank
By Tom Vogt, Columbian
Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: May 12, 2012, 5:00pm
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Volunteer Laura Fernandez helps unload canned goods from mail crates at the Caples Road post office during the 2012 letter carriers food drive.
Local postal employees and community volunteers collected about 60 tons of food Saturday during the letter carriers’ annual food drive.
James Fitzgerald, operations manager for the Clark County Food Bank, said they had hoped to beat last year’s total, 137,000 pounds.
“But still,” he said, 120,000 pounds “is a lot of food.”
And it comes when the food bank’s shelves have been depleted.
The food collected during the December Walk & Knock drive “probably was gone by March,” he said. “So we don’t have much from mid-March through April. This was a really nice boost for us.”
About 150 volunteers helped with Saturday’s drive. That doesn’t include the letter carriers, who picked up the donations as they went from mailbox to mailbox on their routes.
People who didn’t get their donation out to the mailbox in time Saturday still can contribute, Fitzgerald said.
“Letter carriers will keep picking them up for a while, or people can drop them off at any post office. A fair amount trickles in,” Fitzgerald said.
People also can drop off donations at the food bank’s new warehouse, 6502 N.E. 47th Ave.
The bigger facility has made it much easier to process large-scale food reinforcements, Fitzgerald added. In the old warehouse, “We would receive the food and we would shut down for a while, until we got some of it out the door,” he said.
Now, “We are able to receive it and handle it in more reasonable time.”
Volunteers help unload a mail truck filled with canned goods during the annual letter carriers' food drive.
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