Hellertown resident Anne Schaeffer has had MS for the past 23 years. Unable to work since 1999, she needs constant assistance. She'd like a wheelchair. Paul Hetrick, who lives in Quakertown with his wife and three daughters, was in a coma for 15 days after being broad-sided in a driving accident last August. He's suffered severe brain-trauma and stroke-like symptoms, and needs help with basic every day tasks.This could be you. It could be someone who just left you a few minutes ago. It could be any of us.
Schaeffer and Hetrick are just two of the lives touched by Community Outreach Benefit, which has raised more than $280,000 for 24 recipients. Those burdened by serious medical conditions and unaffordable costs (beyond their resources and insurance coverage), have been helped.
It all started eight years ago in St. John UCC, a small Coopersburg church that's lucky if it has fifty or sixty people in the pews on any given Sunday. Annual summer block parties helped raise a lot of this money. Along the way, several other Solehi area churches and school community groups have become involved, too. At this time, there are around 300 active volunteers.
One of them is Glenn Kranzley, former comments page editor at The Morning Call. He was always very good at whittling my 7,000 word essays to a sentence, and his absence is probably felt most by those who are still at that beleaguered newspaper. In Glenn's words, "Nothing is closer to my heart than what my church is doing to help the Solehi, Saucon Valley and Upper Bucks communities."
This year, in addition to the annual block party, there will be a benefit concert by the Craig Thatcher Allstar Review at Zoellner Arts Center on May 22, 7 PM. (You can read about it and get your $20 tickets here.) Proceeds will benefit the church in general. As explained by Glenn, this "enables us to put so much of our energy in the the Community Benefit."
St Johns' incidentally, is an active member of the Lehigh County Conference of Churches, sends volunteers every month to its soup kitchen, supports Phoebe Home, Bethany Children’s Home and Turning Point. It is home to the Coopersburg Neighborhood Senior Center and two Girl Scout troops.
How could such a good church have ever admitted a journalist? Glenn must have told them he's a politician.
Sadder than their stories is that these people have to rely on charities to help them with services and equipment that countries as close as Canada provide for all citizens while spending half what we spend on health insurance they money with a higher level of care. Immigrants to Canada are accepted in the national plan as long as you're under 48 years old. That's my advice.
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