Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Potlatch Along With Area Loggers Raise $8,333 In Benefit

Area loggers and other members of the forestry community participated in the third annual Log-A-Load For Kids campaign. The campaign was started here with a donation of one load of pine logs from Potlatch Corporation. This load was sold to Deltic Farm and Timber Company at Waldo for $3,404. Mike Leamons Logging cut, skidded and loaded the logs and Mickey Strickland hauled the load to Deltic. Loggers and other forestry community representatives then donated from $5 to $1,000 each to reach a total of $8,333.

The fund-raising effort was then celebrated in the Prescott area with a fish fry sponsored by Potlatch. Prescott Rotary Club members, Duncan Culpepper and Johnny Brannon Jr., assisted in the event by cooking and helping to serve the fish. During the event, a drawing was held for a Remington .270 caliber rifle and a Poulan chain saw. Robbie Hutson of Prescott won the rifle and James Olvier, also of Prescott won the chain saw.

Thanks go to the Rotary Club and everyone who participated in this effort.

"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, Prescott area Log-A- Load event coordinator. The program started in 1988 in South Carolina when two loggers offered to contribte 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-Log 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 three years alone, Arkansas' Log-A-Load For Kids program has raised nearly $200,000, 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 service 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.

"We are joining efforts of loggers and members of the forestry community throughout the state with the hope that we will help make miracles happen for the kids at Arkansas Children's Hospital," said Cornelius. In 1995, there were nearly 450 children from Nevada and surronding counties 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 or own children there ourselves," Cornelius said. He added that the many loggers, foresters, mill workers, manufacturers and others who voluntarily work to raise money throgh 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 Prescott event was included as part of the 1996 Log-A-Load For kids fundraising goal of $125,000, 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. This money was given the weekend of the National Children's Miracle Network Telethon which was broadcast with live local segments from KTHV-Arkansas Channel 11 in Little Rock.

Special thanks to everyone who helped with this fundraiser.