Dixon residents asked to donate to letter carriers’ food drive Saturday

DIXON – The annual National Association of Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive will be Saturday, May 11.

On that day, Sauk Valley residents are asked to donate non-perishable items by putting them in a bag and setting the bag of donations out by their mailbox.

Ron Helfrich, a retired Dixon letter carrier who has coordinated the Dixon food drive since 2000, is asking residents with Dixon, Polo and Franklin Grove mailing addresses to have their items out by 9:30 a.m. Saturday. He stressed the food drive’s importance during an interview with Shaw Local on Tuesday.

“There are very young kids out there who are hungry through no fault of their own,” he said. “There are parents out there who are having a hard time providing through no fault of their own.”

Each year, letter carriers across the country head out on their routes on the second Saturday in May to collect donations of non-perishable food items to benefit local food pantries, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers’ website. Since launching in 1993, the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive has grown into the nation’s largest one-day food drive, helping to fill the shelves of food banks in cities and towns throughout the United States.

The national, coordinated effort by the NALC to help fight hunger in America grew out of discussions in 1991. A pilot drive was held in 10 cities in October 1991, and it proved so successful that work began immediately on making it a nationwide effort, according to the website.

Input from food banks and pantries suggested that late spring would be the best time because most food banks start running out of the donations received during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods by that point in the year.

A revamped drive was organized for May 15, 1993, with a goal of having at least one NALC branch in each of the 50 states participating. More than 11 million pounds of food was collected – a one-day record in the United States – involving more than 220 union branches.

In the 30 years since it began, the national food drive has collected approximately 1.9 billion pounds of food for those in need, according to the NALC.

Dixon’s letter carriers began taking part in the food drive 28 years ago; this is Helfrich’s 25th year coordinating the Dixon food drive. He was a letter carrier for 24 years, and even though he retired in 2020, he has continued as the food drive coordinator in a volunteer capacity, he said.

He said that when the food drive began in Dixon all those years ago, about 300 pounds of food was collected at each yearly drive. But through word of mouth, that amount increased to an average of 7,000-8,000 pounds of food each year. It grew to as much as 15,000 pounds per event in the years just prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The pandemic caused a pretty serious drop,” he said, adding that the amount of food collected has started to increase over the past couple years. In all, more than 77,500 pounds of food has been collected by Dixon letter carriers since he began tallying the totals in 2015.

Of that food, the items collected in Dixon go to the Dixon Food Pantry. The food collected in Polo and Franklin Grove will go to food pantries in those communities. Food collected in Sterling and Rock Falls will stay in the communities in which it was collected, Helfrich said.

His hope is that residents will take the time to set food out this year to help their neighbors.

“Think of them as if they were your family members in need,” he said.