Collections For WHAS Crusade For Children Weekend Begins Friday
Jun 02,2009 00:00 by Paul B. Hayes
For the 46th year in a row, volunteers from the Columbia-Adair County Fire Department will be out in force this weekend, manning roadblocks and soliciting donations for the 2009 WHAS Crusade for Children.
Crusade Weekend gets underway Friday afternoon at 3 p.m., and roadblocks will be manned at major intersections around town until 8 o'clock Friday night.
Collections will begin again at 8 a.m. Saturday morning, and will continue until 4 p.m. at which time the volunteer firemen, along with members of the Breeding Area Volunteer Fire Department and Knifley Area Volunteer Fire Department - who will also be collecting this weekend -will travel to Adair County Elementary School, where they will participate in a live Crusade for Children broadcast on WBKO-13.
County Crusade chairman Brandon Lewis said that while the economic conditions may affect this year's donations to the Crusade, they are confident that Adair Countians will again show their support for the worthy cause.
"The Crusade is about helping children, and the citizens of Adair County have always given from the heart when it comes to the Crusade," Lewis noted. "Not only does it benefit special needs children all over the state, but many Adair County children benefit from it each year, as most of the money we collect - and in some years more than we collect - comes back to the local school system to help our kids here."
Anita Wethington, Director of Special Education for the Adair County School System, said that grants from the Crusade help them provide services and materials for the more than 375 special needs children in the school system that otherwise they might not have.
"The Crusade money has helped our special needs program tremendously, and in light of the budget cuts in recent years, it's even more important to us now."
Wethington said that they used the grant money they received from the Crusade last year to pay the salary for a speech therapist that served 65 students. This year, they have applied for Crusade grants to help pay part of a speech therapist's salary, plus to purchase 20 new computers and monitors for use by special needs students."
Both Wethington and Supt. Darrell Treece say they really appreciate the community's support of the Crusade for Children, and what it means for the school system.
"We really appreciate the effort the community puts forth to support the Crusade," Supt. Treece said. "And, its good to see that most of the money collected here comes back to help the community." Photo: CRUSADE WEEKEND. The 2009 WHAS Crusade for Children Weekend starts Friday, and Adair County is ready to go. Displaying a Crusade banner and collection buckets are, from left: Adair County School System Director of Special Education Anita Wethington, Supt. Darrell Treece, County Crusade Chairman Brandon Lewis and Cody Petty, one of the many special needs children that the Crusade has benefited. (Photo by Paul B. Hayes)