Friday, Nov. 9, 2001 | 9:57 a.m.
Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at 259-4082 or [email protected].
When it's 112 and mid-July, it's really tough to think about winter coats.
Shoot, it's hard to even consider that winter will come at all, and that it will be cold once it gets here.
That realization is tougher to reach when you've moved here from a place such as Maine, where winter is cold enough to freeze a memory.
"It's in the 40s, and I looked around and people are bundled up in scarves, mittens and hats," said Harriet Bernard, who moved here from Maine two years ago. "I didn't realize it was as chilly out here as it is in winter."
And right off, Bernard saw a need.
"There's a lot of kids who don't have coats," she said.
So last year, when she'd lived here barely a year, Bernard plopped donation boxes inside area Albertson's stores and collected 900 coats for children that were distributed through the Salvation Army.
No, she doesn't work for the agency. No, she doesn't work for Albertson's. Bernard simply offered help where she saw the opportunity to do so.
"She's unbelievable. She's an awesome woman," Charles Desiderio, Salvation Army spokesman, said.
Collection boxes should be in all Albertson's stores by this weekend and will remain there through Dec. 9. Bernard has enlisted University of Nevada, Las Vegas students to pick up the coats once a week, and Al Phillips The Cleaner will clean them for free before the Salvation Army distributes them.
This year's goal is 3,000 coats.
"The coats are out there," Desiderio said. "There are thousands of families with coats in the closet (their children) have outgrown six months ago. I'm sure that if many make the effort to look, we'll get 3,000 with no problem."
The coats will go to the children of families who seek assistance from the Salvation Army, he said. These are families who come to the agency seeking gasoline or food to tie them over in a pinch -- a pinch many more families will be feeling because of vast layoffs following the Sept. 11 attacks.
"This year, more than any other year, we're going to need them," Desiderio said. "Last year we gave (Christmas) toys and clothes to 10,457 kids. We're probably looking at 15,000 this year.
"And we are going to take care of those kids this year, one way or another."
They are members of an invisible population.
"People in Las Vegas have no clue as to how many needy people there are," Desiderio said. "These are people who are living in apartments. They are not all out on the streets."
The Salvation Army is one of those agencies that has been strapped to the wall in the attack relief effort. Desiderio says nationally the charity has collected $38 million in donations but shelled out $75 million in relief in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Bernard, a career counselor at Dahan Institute of Massage Studies, doesn't consider her efforts that extraordinary. Helping people brings joy to them and to her.
It's not about how long you live in a place. It's about how you live there.
"Where you lived before is where you lived before. But you live here now," she said. "And you need to be part of the community where you live."
We're lucky she's part of ours.
archive
