Letter carriers deliver to needy with food drive

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| Saturday, May 10, 2003 11:12 PM CDT | () comments

Tom Saul

Davenport letter carrier Sheryl McClanahan expected to finish her inner city Davenport mail route late Saturday.

She had a normal load of mail to deliver as she began making her rounds in a neighborhood off West 4th and Marquette streets under a drizzling, overcast sky. But along the way, her customers left out bags of food for the needy.

"Many of these people are not that well off themselves, but they will put something out because they want to help," she said.

Saturday, all across the country, letter carriers took part in the National Association of Letter Carrier's, or NALC, 11th annual food drive. Nationwide, letter carriers and volunteers in about 10,000 cities and towns picked up bags of food left by their customers at mailboxes or on front porches.

In Davenport alone, about 120 letter carriers, who were assisted by volunteers, were out collecting the paper and plastic sacks of canned goods and other non-perishable foods that were turned over to the River Bend Foodbank in Moline, said Jim Frangipane, a coordinator of the event for the letter carriers.

Nora and Norman Harmer left two bags of canned goods on their front porch in the 1100 block of West 4th in Davenport for McClanahan to add to the growing bounty in the back of her mail truck. For the couple, the donation was part spring cleaning and part desire to help those in need.

"I went and cleaned out my pantry and found that we had so much that we may as well give some of it to a good cause," Nora Harmer said.

At the foodbank, Kyle Burke, 16, of East Moline, and Tut Maloney, 16, of Rock Island, both students at Alleman High School, Rock Island, unloaded food from the trunk and back seat of a Chevrolet Lumina that they collected along a mail route where they assisted a letter carrier.

"He gave us a little map of the route and just told us to follow him and pick up whatever was left at the mailboxes," Burke said.

Tom Laughlin is executive director of the foodbank, which serves pantries in 22 Iowa and Illinois counties, including 60 pantries in Henry, Rock Island and Scott counties. He said last year, 83,000 pounds was collected, and Saturday, the final total was 80,000 pounds.

It is not so much the quantity of food that the letter carriers collect as the timing, he said. "The timing is important," he said. "This goes a long way toward helping us to stock our food pantries for the summer."

Tom Saul can be contacted at

(563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com.