[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 30, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E773-E774]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SALUTING THE SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA RED CROSS AND ITS VOLUNTEERS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE SESTAK

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 30, 2008

  Mr. SESTAK. Madam Speaker, I rise before you to salute the 
southeastern Pennsylvania Red Cross and its outstanding volunteers 
during National Volunteer Week.
  April 27 through May 3 is National Volunteer Week. Last year in 
southeastern Pennsylvania, 7,664 Red Cross volunteers helped victims of 
disaster, taught their neighbors how to save a life, mentored school 
kids on the meaning of community, and connected military families 
separated by war and thousands of miles.
  The Red Cross in southeastern Pennsylvania is the place where:
  Someone you do not recognize puts your family to bed the night you 
have been burned out of your home--72,000 fires in America last year, 
905 of them in southeastern Pennsylvania. Red Cross volunteers answered 
the call every night when 5,292 of our neighbors--over 40% of them 
children--suddenly found themselves without a place to live.
  A total stranger will give you their blood--four million donors 
across America, 175,000 of them in southeastern Pennsylvania. Over 
1,600 local Red Cross volunteers run over 240 blood drives every month.
  Someone you never knew will help save your child from drowning--11 
million Americans were trained last year in life saving techniques, 
111,739 in southeastern Pennsylvania in over 8,000 classes.
  You call to speak to a friendly voice when you have an emergency that 
involves a serviceman or woman overseas. 3,253 times, the Red Cross 
received those calls on its 24-7 hotline last year.
  400 kids from 18 Philadelphia public high schools gather to learn how 
to save a life, to help out at the ``Kids Carnival'' on Martin Luther 
King Day, and to organize blood drives, food drives or toy drives in 
their schools and their communities.
  And Red Cross volunteers are people like:
  Martin Strom: During the day he is a SEPTA bus driver, but at night 
``Big Marty'' turns up at the burning homes of people he has never 
met--starting them on the road to recovery from what for many is the 
worst night of their lives.
  Wilma Yeakel: Wilma has worked over 2,000 blood drives in 25 years, 
and she will tell you that volunteers are paid in six figures--s-m-i-l-
e-s.
  Tom Warner: this septuagenarian still turns up at his neighborhood 
``Y'' in Germantown to teach lifeguard classes--as he has every year 
for 57 years--and he will tell you that his lungs are in better shape 
than many of his students.
  Carol Barnett: longtime Eagles fan Carol has been helping military 
families for the last 17 years, working at least two ten-hour shifts 
like clockwork, every single week. And Carol volunteers on holidays so 
that others can take a break.
  Cornelius Moody: Franklin Learning Center junior Cornelius said it 
best in his essay on the honor of wearing his Red Cross Shirt:

[[Page E774]]

``Our Red Cross Club is not just another school program, it's a 
mindset. A mindset to help anyone in need in any way you can, not 
because you know them, not for privileges, not for awards, but because 
in your heart you know you can help this person, you should help this 
person, so you will help this person.''
  Thomas Jefferson wrote, ``It is part of the American character to 
consider nothing as desperate.'' Surely what Jefferson envisioned for 
his America were people like Janice Lufkin and Andrew Brownstein in 
Montgomery County; Dan Hagen and Edna Hendricks in Delaware County; and 
Ed Bittner and Debbie Dorito in Chester County--who have together put 
in over one century of service to people they will probably never see 
again, but who desperately needed their help, their shoulder, their 
kind words in their time of greatest need. These volunteers have served 
in every corner of this region, and in places like Biloxi, Pascagoola 
and New Orleans, at wildfires in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, 
bridge collapses in Minnesota, and hurricanes in Florida.
  Jefferson was right--nothing is desperate, when you live in a country 
with people like them and the other 7,664 volunteers here at the 
southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Red Cross.

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