Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Loggers Working To Help Children

It's difficult to comprehend logging and children in most cases.

However, loggers across Arkansas are participating in the Log-A-Load for Kids program again this year, raising money to help out the Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Mike Guercio, with International Paper Co., spoke to the Gurdon Rotary Club about the program.

He said area loggers get donations of time, money and items, with the items auctioned off. This is done in each of the state's 75 counties and will occur in Clark County May 13 at the fairgrounds.

In addition, the loggers will donate a load of logs to be auctioned off. Normally, this load goes for far more than the market value of the wood being sold, as do other items for the auction.

Guercio said the goal for Arkansas is $350,000 this year. The ACH currently has $757,000 drawing interest, and the additional amount being sought would allow the hospital to endow a chair for the cardiovascular unit.

This chair, he said, will be used to help recruit new physicians as other doctors get older and retire.

Donations last year in Clark County were disappointing as only $15,000 was raised. The goal for 1999, he said, is double last year's amount, or $30,000. This amount, he said, is more in line for donations among counties this size.

ACH, he told the Rotarians, is one of the leading children's hospitals in the world, and loggers in Arkansas want to help it keep improving.

The loggers in the state have been working with ACH since 1993, he said, helping the hospital purchase much needed equipment used in saving the lives of Arkansas' children, as well as children from around the world who come to ACH for medical help.

Today, Guercio said, children can and are being saved who would have died years ago.

The Log-A-Load for Kids program, he continued, helps bring communities together in a common interest. The money raised is used solely to help the ACH.

The ACH, established in 1910, is the only pediatric hospital in Arkansas, and only one of two such facilities with human nutrition research centers in the nation with designation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.