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St. Vincent packs supplies for school Photo by Steve Johnson Ida Gutcher packs a bag of school supplies Saturday at St. Vincent de Paul in Medford. Effort grows every year, and agency plans to discontinue annual toy drive this Christmas By SUSAN JAY In a warm, narrow room, a small group of volunteers hustled to fill 700 bags with thousands of school supplies Saturday. In assembly-line fashion, eight St. Vincent de Paul volunteers dropped every school item imaginable, including pens, pencils and rulers, calculators, plastic supply boxes and pencil pouches into brown grocery bags. In the middle of the line, Ida Gutcher moved quickly. Over and over, she grabbed a bottle of Elmer's glue from one shelf and a bright yellow box of Crayola crayons from another and throw them in. The next volunteer rapidly slipped in a blue canvas binder filled with lined paper and index tabs, and another volunteer dropped in more note paper. By 10 a.m., 300 bulging bags lined several shelves. St. Vincent de Paul has been helping low-income families with school supplies for 10 years, under the leadership of Dolores Harmon and her daughter Lori Harmon of Medford. Apply for supplies Low-income families who need help with school supplies can apply at St. Vincent de Paul, 2424 N. Pacific Highway, Medford, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. starting Monday and running through the week. Families will be screened, and if they qualify, will be given vouchers and directions to where to pick up a bag of school items. For details, call 772-3828. It all started one August day 12 years ago, when a woman came to the charitable organization, crying because she couldn't buy school supplies for her three children. Lil Howell, then the director, called the Harmons, who went out that night and bought the items for the woman's children. The next year they learned that another woman who needed services at St. Vincent de Paul had sold her blood to buy school supplies for her kids. "That was a clear message to us," Lori Harmon said, that the need for school supplies was great. Every year since then the demand has increased. In 1998 they gave away 599 school supply bags and spent $9,070. This year they expect to see 700 low-income children from first to 12th grade and will spend close to $10,000. And that's at bargain-basement prices. "Every kid in this county needs the same opportunities to start school as every other kid," Dolores Harmon said. "These kids don't need other kids looking down on them" because they don't have adequate supplies, she said. She and her small cadre of volunteers believe starting a child off right in school means they won't be discouraged and will be more motivated to do well. Most of the families they help are barely getting by even though they are hard-working. Often they are single parents. The group often starts shopping for back-to-school supplies the year before, to catch the best sales. They also use lists of items from school districts broken down by grade. This time, with their hard won donations they bought 5,000 pencils, 2,000 pens and 750 pencil pouches, 744 memo pads, 570 calculators and 544 blue canvas binders already filled with paper. Dolores Harmon will have just enough money to pay for the two pallets of binders that arrived Saturday, and after that she will have to start raising money again. She is searching for more contributions. She is especially interested in finding an individual, company or organization that would be willing to help purchase Texas Instruments and Casio calculators -- the most expensive items -- which cost up to $10 each. In the meantime, the back-to-school project will become the group's only annual campaign, Harmon said. After many years, the agency will not run its Christmas toy drive anymore. Harmon said that project has become harder and harder, especially with her arthritis, and with many other agencies distributing toys during the holiday. Under other volunteers, St. Vincent de Paul also runs a shelter, a meal site, a kitchen and a store, plus a variety of financial-aid services for families in need. To contribute to the back-to-school project, call Harmon at 779-0697 or St. Vincent de Paul at 772-3828. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA