By JOSEPH KELLARD
"We'll probably combine together as a community, and hopefully we'll donate what we can as a community effort," said Bob Transom, president of the Oceanside Kiwanis Club and Oceanside Community Services, last Thursday. "I'm just putting things together, so this is a long-term effort."
Kiwanis Club planned to have its Kids Club collect canned goods at local supermarkets over the weekend, and Kiwanians were joining their efforts, Transom said. Stu Gubenko, past president of the Oceanside Rotary Club, said, "We're contacting our district office and trying to get a regional Rotary effort started." Asked what relief efforts businesses may have planned, Bob Towers, president of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce, said local merchants would likely combine their donations with others. "An effort like this would have to be a joint one by everybody in Oceanside," Towers said.
With talk of the death toll possibly rising into the thousands, and bodies being found everywhere from flooded streets to attics, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Herb Brown addressed the hurricane's devastation at a general staff meeting at Oceanside High School on Aug. 31, the day before the district's schools opened. "One thing I said is that since it looks like this is going to be the worst natural disaster in the history of our country, that we need to do our fund-raising as quickly as we can," Brown said.
Brown asked union presidents to coordinate with their members, and for teachers and principals to do the same with students and their parents. For starters, the faculty at Oceanside Middle School asked students to collect hygiene kits and school-supply kits for the people Katrina left homeless, which they donated on their way into school last Friday.
"I think things will start developing over the next few days," Brown said. "Certainly we're going to do everything we can as quickly as we can."
Rabbi Mark Greenspan of the Oceanside Jewish Center indicated that his congregation planned on doing charitable giving through the schools. "We're working in our community on a campaign, possibly with the schools through the Oceanside Interfaith Council, to assist in this effort," he said. "That's in the works."
Island Park Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ed Price expressed uncertainty last week about what relief efforts his staff may undertake, as he had yet to meet with them before school started on Tuesday. "Our staff here has always done something like this," Price said. "We did relief efforts for the Asian tsunami earlier this year. Right now, people in the devastated areas need food and clothes, and the government and organizations like the Red Cross are stepping in to do that. Long term, these people are also going to need help. So until our teachers meet, I don't know what, exactly, they are going to do or how they are going to do it."
"Oceanside Community Services is going to donate an undisclosed amount of money," Transom said.
Greenspan said that he is also encouraging congregants to give money to major charitable organizations, in particularly UJA-Federation. "I have a feeling that the needs are going to be here for a long time, because this tragedy is so overwhelming, and the UJA has responded to every major catastrophe we've ever had and have set up an organization where 100 percent of the money goes toward whatever the situation is."
