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600 lbs. of aluminum, 1 big heart Husband's legacy to late wife becomes a new urban legend By BOB HUNTER For some people, it's the thought that counts. For Les Ladd, it's the act. Ladd's act, for the past 15 years, has been to collect 720,000 pull tabs from aluminum cans to help raise money for the National Kidney Foundation and to remember his wife, who died of complications involving kidney failure. The hundreds of thousands of pull tabs amounted to more than 600 pounds of aluminum that was recycled, with the proceeds donated to the Kidney Foundation. Ladd, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, lives in Hornbrook, Calif. His wife of 42 years, Elaine, was on peritoneal dialysis at the Medford Dialysis Center and had suffered from diabetes most of her adult life, which contributed to her kidney failure. She died in October of 1989. Some years before his wife's death, Ladd began collecting the pull tabs. With the help from 10 Brownie and Junior troops from Northern California and a number of individuals, his collection grew into a mountain. At 1,200 tabs per pound and a recycling value of 42 cents per pound, the mountain becomes almost a financial molehill, returning about $250 to the program. But to diminish the effort because of the relatively small monetary return misses the point, says Kimberly Spence, the regional program coordinator in Medford for the National Kidney Foundation of Oregon and Washington. "It's what he does; he does it for his wife," Spence says. "It's personal, and for each person it's a different reason." Spence says the pull tabs have developed into something of an urban legend for the Kidney Foundation, with some donors believing that the collection of pull tabs covers the costs of dialysis. In fact, she said, dialysis treatments have been covered by Medicare since 1978 But the money raised from recycling pull tabs does provide financial assistance to dialysis patients for such things as emergency financial assistance for medication and transportation. The Kidney Foundation also offers educational scholarships for kidney patients, as well as ongoing patient and public education, including health screenings. "We love the fact the we have people collecting pull tabs," Spence says, "because it helps fund our patient program." The local office of the Kidney Foundation has a number of other fund-raisers during the year, including golf and bowling tournaments. It currently is raising funds for Christmas baskets for needy families. Spence noted that before Ladd's 15-year collection of pull tabs was hauled away in a truck driven by Perry Card of Central Point, he asked for one small favor. He wanted to keep a small bag of about 150 tabs, as a "seed" to help him start on his next collection. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.