Recycling Christmas for a good cause
By BILL DUNCAN
Ever wonder what to do with all the beautiful cards you receive at Christmas, other than trashing them and choking the landfill with that one more straw?
Ever since Eunice Dutton of Roseburg introduced me to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, my Christmas cards have been packaged and mailed to the St. Jude’s Ranch for Children’s recycling program in Boulder City, Nev. Dutton, now retired, was a social worker for the Douglas County Senior Services in Roseburg, OR when I noticed she had boxes around the county health department asking for old Christmas cards.
No, the cards aren’t going into the Boulder City landfill or even to a Nevada recycling center. Instead those cards that came to my address in 2007, will become Christmas ornaments or be made into new cards for the 2008 Christmas season. St. Jude’s Ranch for Children was the vision of Fr. Jack Adam, an Episcopal priest who wanted to create a safe haven for abandoned children in Southern Nevada and he named the ranch after St. Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.
This cause was not impossible and has thrived for more than 40 years in the Nevada desert. Fr. Jack, who died last year, was surprised by what his dream accomplished and how fast it happened. The first resident, a boy named Eddie, opened the facility in 1967. The Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns from Bristol, England came to care for the children.
Thirty four years ago, the director, Fr. Herbert A. Ward, started the recycled Christmas card program. People from all over the world sent their used Christmas card fronts to the ranch where children precision trimmed the card fronts and glue them onto a pre-printed card which is then sold to the public.
The program is not to be confused with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., a leading pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children’s catastrophic diseases.
The mission for the ranch is to give a safe home for neglected children and to break the vicious welfare cycle by teaching the children to learn to earn.
That is what created the "Born Again Cards." Recently, the program was expanded to include Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day and Easter cards and other special occasion greeting cards, post cards using the fronts from recycled greeting cards. One of the most sought after is the angel and teddy bear cards.
The only requirement of the ranch is that donors send only the card fronts. The card fronts should be mailed to:
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children
100 St. Jude’s Street
Boulder City, NV 89–6-0100
To purchase these Born Again Cards send $8 per package of 10 (along with the type of cards you wish to buy: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, birthday, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc.) to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, P.O. Box 60100, Boulder City, NV 89006-0100. or call (800) 492-3562 for credit card orders.
You can learn more about the ranch and this program by going to www.stjudesranch.org the St. Jude’s Ranch Web site.
As part of its teaching to earn, the children receive 15 cents for each card they create and the money either goes into a savings account, or a college fund.
In 2003, the ranch was receiving so many card fronts, the ranch decided to stop accepting card fronts and re-evaluate and retool the program. It is now back on line and the ranch is accepting used greeting cards.
So why not honor the sender of your cards by forwarding the fronts to the children at St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. St. Jude, the patron of lost causes, certainly would approve because no child should be lost.
Certainly their welfare is not a lost cause.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)