Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Loggers Unite To Log A Load In Raising Funds For Children's Hospital

Area loggers and other members of the forestry community will gather at the Nevada County Fairgrounds Potlatch building at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 15, to "carry the load for kids" during a fund-raising event for Arkansas Children's Hospital.

The fish fry, sponsored by Potlatch Corporation, is one in a series of events scheduled throughout the state as part of the fifth annual Log a Load For Kids Campaign . Loggers and members of the forestry community are invited to participate, as well as others in the area who wish to make a donation.

" Log A Load For Kids is currently one of the fastest growing programs raising money for hospitals participating in the Children's Miracle Network (CMN)," said Jim Cornelius of Potlatch Corporation, coordinator of the event.

The program started in 1988 in South Carolina when two loggers offered to contribute their earnings from a load of timber to help children hospitalized in South Carolina's primary critical care facilities for infants and youths. Today, Log A Load For Kids is operating in 12 states, primarily in the south.

In Arkansas, this effort is carried out by loggers and other members of the forestry community, who work diligently to raise money to support the personnel, research and equipment needed to save the lives of thousands of Arkansas' children. In the past two years alone, Arkansas' Log A Load for Kids program has raised nearly $300,000, all of which remained locally to benefit the hospital.

Arkansas Children's Hospital, like other CMN hospitals, treats children with all types of afflictions -- cancer, heart and muscular disease, birth defects, cerebral palsy, AIDS and accident victims. The staff and volunteers pride themselves on treating the whole child, rendering services based on need, not the ability to pay.

Through the support of local programs like Log A Load For Kids and individual donations, CMN hospitals provide an estimated $2.5 billion in charity care each year.

"Prescott-area loggers and members of the forestry community are again joining efforts of loggers and members of the forestry community throuhgout the state with the hope that we will help make miracles happen for the kids at Arkansas Children's Hospital," Cornelius said.

In 1996, there were over 400 children from Nevada and surrounding counties who were admitted to the hospital, and other several hundred who received some form of outpatient treatment.

"It's amazing how many of us either know the families of these children, or have had one of our own children there ourselves," he said. Cornelius added that the many loggers, foresters, mill workers, manufacturers and others who voluntarily work to raise money through the Log A Load for Kids program do so based on one belief: "In Arkansas, trees are our most important renewable resource, but our children are by far our most precious resource."

Money raised at the Nevada County event will be included as part of the 1997 Log A Load For Kids fundraising goal of $150,000 set in January by a statewide planning committee comprised of members of the Arkansas Forestry Association and Arkansas Timber Producers Association, sponsors of the program.

The campaign runs through June 1, the weekend of the national Children's Miracle Network Telethon, which will be broadcast with live local segments from KTHV in Little Rock.

The Rotary Club has agreed to help again with the fish fry and will do an excellent job of cooking, Cornelius said.

Anyone who wishes to attend the Nevada County fish fry, or would like to make a donation to the Log A Load For Kids campaign, may contact Cornelius at Potlatch at 887-2746.