By Beth Dunn Hurricane Bob hit Cape Cod at the tail end of the summer I turned nineteen. My mother was in charge of setting up the biggest shelter in …
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By Beth Dunn Hurricane Bob hit Cape Cod at the tail end of the summer I turned nineteen. My mother was in charge of setting up the biggest shelter in …
I know from researching The Long Way Home, my book about the immigrant experience in the war, that many of the half million foreign born soldiers who fought with U.S. forces got their first taste of American hospitality at Red Cross canteens.
What a welcome they received as they stepped onto American soil and how they appreciated the Red Cross ladies as they dispensed 35,000 half-pints of milk at the pier. Many had not tasted milk for four years.
To me, the Red Cross will always be linked to my mother’s memory of her first taste of bread and butter, as a little girl held prisoner…
I remember one kid in particular. He was one of those little guys with orange hair and white eyebrows; the kind of kid that the sun burns just for fun.
It was in that line that we began to try to make sense of something that couldn’t be explained.
Since my high school days, I’ve been a Red Cross blood donor, my initial motivation being my somewhat rare type (B negative).
But then I asked him what he felt was most important about being a good physician. “Being there,” he said. “Just being there.”
… the floor littered with empty shreds of red and green foil, and the two beloved chihuahuas who were spending the night with us already beginning to look bilious. What did we do?
Back in the Middle Ages – the period I write about – there was no organization like the Red Cross to help those who suffered disasters, natural or otherwise.