Miss Tillie and the 2,000 turkeys
When I started ColleenCason.com, I decided I would take on writing and Internet assignments from nonprofit organizations and businesses I believe in.
Blame it on Miss Tillie.
Tillie Ahearn is a military widow and the busiest body at Naval Base Ventura County. Right before Thanksgiving 2004 with our nation at war in Iraq, she learned the base food bank that helps the families of the lower-paid troops serving in the Gulf had too few turkeys to go around.
So she asked me to write a column appealing to the public for turkeys. Miss Tillie, ever the extrovert, posed in a parka in the empty freezer for a photo to accompany the article.
The morning it appeared, hundreds of people showed up at the local food bank. An old lady stood in the pre-dawn chill with a turkey in each hand, the plastic bags cutting into her palms.
In the end, readers of Miss Tillie’s story gave almost 2,000 turkeys and close to $50,000 in cash.
It was one of my proudest moment as a columnist. It drove home what can be accomplished by the power of words written by someone who believes in rightness of a cause.
Copyright 2007 Colleen Cason. All rights reserved
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