Published Tuesday, March 04, 2008 1:12 PM
Updated Tuesday, March 04, 2008 1:12 PM

 

Watts Line 03/05/08

Soldier’s plan hits red tape


On 1A today, there is a story about one of our soldiers in Iraq, U,S, Army PFC Bob Dunleavy. He wrote to us a few weeks ago with what seemed like a reasonable request to help him gather school supplies for the Iraqi children he sees every day in the course of his duties. School supplies. That’s all he wants.

We said sure. We can do that. We’ll write a story, then collect supplies from ourselves and our readers, and we’ll find a way to transport the supplies to him.

So, Publisher Ellen Priest explored a few options by e-mailing back and forth with Bob Dunleavy. He indicated the only way he knew of was to gather the 1,000-pound minimum required to send the supplies through USAid.

We weren’t sure we could collect 1,000 pounds in a timely manner, so, I told Ellen I’d check around for other ways to get the supplies to our soldier.

I checked with a few postal and shipping companies.

“The cheapest way is through the U.S. Postal Service,” the first one said.

The second place gave the same story. And the next.

“Okay, then,” I thought and headed on over to the post office. I dutifully waited in line and got up to the window. The woman was perfectly nice and showed me a box I could use to send supplies.

“This is $10.95 flat rate box,” she said. But the price seemed a little high for a one foot by one foot by five-inch box -- especially if we collected a lot of stuff.

“There’s got to be a better way to send something between a couple of pounds and a thousand pounds,” I whined to the clerk. “There’s got to be some middle ground somewhere.”

“No ma’am. The U.S. Postal Service is your best choice.” She waived the box at me to emphasize the point.

I left feeling a little discouraged. We wanted to help our soldier, but would like to do so without going broke doing it. I envisioned a hundred $10.95 boxes. It was Friday afternoon, so I gave the situation a good mulling over during the weekend.

Monday a.m. I told Ellen I had a plan. I would contact one of our local Congressmen.

So I gave Henry Brown’s office a call. I’ve known Rep. Brown since his first campaign and he’d always been helpful when I needed assistance. The phone was answered by Brown staffer, Earl Copeland, whom I’ve also known forever.

“Earl, I want to send school supplies to a soldier in Iraq for the children. They have nothing,” I said with as much earnestness as I could muster.

“The U.S. Postal Service is your best bet, Judy,” he said.

“But Earl, there’s got to be a better way to send a lot of supplies without having to raise 1,000 pounds of stuff.”

“Nope. There’s not a way. We’ve tried everything,” he said, telling me the truth. You can tell when someone’s telling you the way it really is.

“We had some folks who wanted to send shrimp to our soldiers to give them a taste of home. We tried everything. Even thought we might could slip them aboard a transport plane – but we couldn’t.”

“That’s terrible,” I told him, imagining how happy our soldiers would be to have a few shrimp.

“And then we had a company offer to send over water purification equipment for the people over there, and we couldn’t get those over there either.” USAid is the only way and the red tape….well, we couldn’t do it.”

So what I have discovered is that if you have a few pencils and paper, you can send it over for about $10. Or if you have a 1,000 pallet you might get that over there by trying to go through channels that even our own politicians can’t negotiate. (What happens if you collect 693 pounds – then what do you do?)

Anything between the two extremes is apparently not going to happen.

So read the story on the front. If you feel that you can send a few school supplies to our friend and native son, please do. We’re getting a few boxes together over here to do the same. Or if you know something we don’t, let us know.

It’s amazing to me that this is the best we can do.

Contact Judy Watts at 873-9424 ext. 220 or jwatts@journalscene.com.