by Rebecca Catalanello Timber Harvesting Magazine July / August 1996 Reprinted by permission of Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc.

Loggers in 19 states raised more than $1.6 million for Children's Miracle Network hospitals this year, making Log A Load CMN's ninth largest contributor.

What do you get when you put a logger, an industry critic and a sick child into one room? How about a program that has grown to include 19 states, $1.6 million and more than 160 children's hospitals nationwide.

Loggers from 19 states raised more than $1.6 million for local Children's Miracle Network hospitals during the 1996 Log A Load for Kids program. Georgia logger Jonathan Parker accompanied by Georgia Log A Load chairman Tom Ritch of Inland Container Corp. presented a $1,575,000 check to CMN host John Schneider during a one-minute ceremony televised nationally from Orlando, Fla. on June 2. That total grew more than $40,000 in the weeks following the telethon. "We like to think of wood as being America's renewable resource," Parker told CMN's national audience, "but through the Log A Load for Kids program, we're able to renew lives with that resource."

Since Log A Load's conception in 1988, the program has become CMN's fastset growing national donor. What began as an idea shared by Bill Boyce, a telethon volunteer working with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and Larry Connelly, a Yemassee, SC logger, has grown to include 19 states, six of which were first-time contributors this year: Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia and Maryland.

Unlikely Beginnings

Growing up in Charleston, SC, Bill Boyce had always associated logging with the unpleasantries of industrialization. The Westvaco paper mill in North Charleston was a separate world and frankly, he says, it stunk. He recalls riding down rural highways and seeing land that loggers had cleared and thinking it had been raped. He remembers getting behind a log truck and fearing that a log was about to fall off, or getting in front of one and guessing that the brakes didn't work.

That was 15 years ago.

Since then Bill Boyce has met loggers.

"Working in the Walterboro, SC area I started meeting and doing business with several loggers," says Boyce. I started watching the operations and met some of the greatest people, bar none, in the world who are loggers. They are up at dawn and don't go to bed until way past dark. They are hardworking, honest people."

Among the loggers he became closest with were Larry Connelly and wife Carol. As the relationship with them grew, Boyce's interest in the forestry business grew. Soon, his long-time volunteering efforts with MUSC and his new affection for the logging community began to cross paths. Boyce knew that though the town of Walterboro was very much involved with the Children's Hospital, there was little association with the forestry industry.

Boyce took his concerns to the Connellys, and one evening, while sitting around a dining room table, the idea and the name for Log A Load was born. "My part of it was simply a stroke of luck," says Boyce. Knowing how loggers think and how their families operate, the Connellys suggested pledge cards and one on one contact with the loggers. They brought the logger's mind to the project and gave it grassroots backing, crucial to Log A Load's success.

>From there, the names of the people involved began to multiply.

Rainey Evans, MUSC Telethon Coordinator and local celebrity, helped pick up the ball and, along with Boyce and the Connellys, presented the idea to the South Carolina Forestry Association. The board agreed to sponsor and organize the program. Under the auspices of former SCFA staff member Paul Howe the association spread the word to other state forestry associations.

In 1989, Howe went to work for the American Pulpwood Association, introducing the concept to the Southeastern Technical Division Policy Committee. Taking what Howe calls a "Johnny Appleseed" approach to the project, APA began to push for state-by-state involvement in Log A Load for Kids. Howe authored and compiled a "how to get started" handbook for interested states and spread the word to leaders in the logging community nationwide. What happened from there was a watershed.

Says Howe, "You can go state by state and find two or three people who really just saw the promise of the program in their state. They've stayed after it, pulled other people into it and it has snowballed."

George Ragsdale of Blackstone Timber Company in Blackstone, Va. took the idea to Virginia and North Carolina and became the first national chairman of the LLFK National Advisory Committee staffed by APA. Louisiana Forestry Association started the program in 1991. Ray and Barbara Clark of Clark Logging in Berry, Ala. got the ball rolling in Alabama after the 1992 hospitalization of the son of one of Clark's employees. Tom Ritch of Inland Container Corp. in Coosa, Ga. helped to spearhead an effort in Georgia. From loggers to forestry associations to mills to landowners, the number of people involved has continued to grow.

But all give credit to loggers.

Why Loggers?

CMN states its mission as being to generate funds and awareness programs for the benefit of children served by its associated hospitals.

When Log A Load for Kids stepped up to grab the baton, CMN was an active supporter of the effort. That the annual CMN broadcast is the largest annual telethon in existence with commercial sponsors such as Wal-Mart, Dairy Queen, Amoco, Kraft, Kimberly-Clark and Heinz did not intimidate the movers of Log A Load. Grown to be one of three sponsoring organizations without corporate backing, Log A Load for Kids is composed soley of loggers' and forest industry employees' donations.

At a time in the forest industry when the market, the public and the media all seem to be nipping at the unity of the industry, the Log A Load effort is drawing extensive support from loggers all over the country and is consolidating them in an effort for children, through upturns and downturns in the market.

"Log A Load is the most proactive program developed by loggers in the U.S.," says Richard Lewis, President of APA. "It makes an impact on the community and establishes loggers as leaders nationwide."

Linda Beach, Co-chairman for Mississippi Log A Load, says that in the past year and a half, the program developed by Mississippi has given the logging community a common cause, thus strengthening loggers as a whole.

"Ours is a logger project," says Beach. "We do it ourselves and it makes the loggers feel a little bit more proud about what the loggers have done."

"These are salt of the earth people who are hard, hard workers and have come through some very tough times," says Rainey Evans. "In the aftermath of Hugo, a lot of them went out of business here in South Carolina because of Hugo. The woods were devastated in the low country, and yet they continue to give. Despite the devastation, South Carolina celebrated its largest contribution to CMN last year. Even though they had gone through such trying times, they still came through to help kids and you've got to admire that."

According to Tom Ritch, who helped start the program in Georgia, loggers know the importance of giving to children. "For the most part, loggers are family people and know the benefits of having a good strong children's hospital and it's a heart-touching cause. It's easy to pull somebody's heart strings when you're talking about sick children."

The Children They Help

CMN estimates that despite the fact that CMN hospitals treat 5 million children each year,another 7 million children still go without adequatemedical care. The hospitals treat all types of afflictions - cancer, heart and muscular diseases, birth defects, cerebral palsy, AIDS and accident victims.

And while CMN hospitals provided $2.5 billion in charity care last year, it costs these hospitals another $637.5 million just to maintain equipment, let alone purchase new equipment.

There are dozens of stories of children who have been touched by the efforts of CMN fund raisers. Without the funds donated to the Children's Hospital of the University of Mississippi, the state's only children's hospital, for instance, the hospital helicopter would not have been put back into operation for the service of the state's children outside of Jackson.

When Heather Roberts of Kinston, NC was born, her doctors said she would never make it to her first birthday. Having been born with numerous birth defects, she was put on life support for two months and sent home to die. Abandoned by her parents shortly thereafter, little Heather was discovered by a neighbor and taken in by her grandmother, Gail Haddock.

Seven years and 26 operations later, Heather is still alive and, with the help of Log A Load for Kids, is touching many lives. Haddock, Heather's legal guardian as well as a registered nurse, says that Heather has a story to tell and a gift to give.

"God put every single defect that any one could have into one kid, but He put it in such a pretty package that you can't look at Heather and feel sorry for yourself," says Haddock. "This kid's got it all. This kid has every single body system affected. And yet, she's the happiest, most loving child you'll ever meet."

As North Carolina Log A Load's 1996 poster child, Gail and Heather have gotten the chance to share Heather's story all over the country. She can be seen in Log A Load's promotional video signing "Jesus Loves Me."

"Sharing Heather is how I handle losing Heather," says Haddock. "Because I really believe she's a gift and I have a responsibility to share her. Log A Load helps me do that. It gives me the opportunity - her life will not have been in vain. Long after she's gone, that Log A Load video will still be raising money to help other children."

The stories of children touched by Children's Hospitals are not exclusive to families outside the Log A Load program. Ken Binder had been serving as chairman for Ohio Log A Load when his 5-year-old son, Ben, fractured his thigh bone up to his hip in a fall and had to be admitted to the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Akron.

Ray Clark, Chairman of Alabama's Log A Load, was motivated to start a program in Alabama after Timothy Kimbrell, the son of long-time emplyee, Dean Kimbrell, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor near the base of his brain.

On the same day Lake States Women in Timber President Debbie Blomberg first heard about Log A Load, she found out that her newborn grandson, Luke, was born with a hole in his heart. Today, Blomberg is chairman of the newly formed Wisconsin/Michigan effort.

Tom Ritch helped pioneer the program in Georgia after 5-year-old friend Tyler Duffey of Carrollton, Ga. was diagnosed with leukemia.

"There wasn't a thing I could do for him and he was a real close friend. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have ever done it," says Ritch.

Howe says he regularly meets and talks with individuals who have had a child, a grandchild or a friend who has been in a children's hospital. "When you hear the real life stories, that really brings it all home to you," says Howe.

Log A Load's Future

With a waiting list of 7 million children, children's hospitals across the U.S. still need support. In the last five years, the timber industry has made a net impact of $3.6 million to reduce that need. Every donation goes to the children' hospital in the community from which the gift is given unless the contributor requests otherwise.

This year, the states involved in Log A Load jumped from 13 to 19. Those involved say that the biggest hurdle faced by states who want to become a part of the effort is communicating the need and the goal of the program to the industry.

Rex Storm of Associated Oregon Loggers says that getting started offers a constructive challenge to the industry in a way that no other program has.

"There is no other community service effort that the industry participates in as an industry," he says. "There are many companies that participate in community service projects on their own, but there is no industry-wide service project like this. Right now we feel it is important for the industry to find those areas of common interest and common challenge, to work together at a time when the industry has been assaulted by conflict, struggles and timber supply problems."

Log A Load Advisory Group Co-Chairs Jim and Jan Seaman predict that by 1997 the Log A Load effort will include 25 states and contribute more than $2 million in CMN donations.

"We will definitely continue to push for other states to get involved," says APA's Rick Meyer.

The National Log A Load For Kids Advisory Group will meet in October to plan next year's strategy and goals.

http://www.logaloadforkids.org/article.htm