Ashland youth raises $1,000 with friends’ help

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With the support of a very special teacher and some very special friends and schoolmates, Danielle Clark of Ashland raised $1,000 recently, which she split between three very important organizations: United Cerebral Palsy of Maine, the Autism Society of Maine and the NKH Network.

Danielle’s brother has nonketotic hyperglycinemia, or NKH, a rare and still-incurable metabolic disorder, and receives services from UCP.

This is Danielle’s second consecutive fund-raiser to benefit such organizations but, this year, she received help from “the KIDS Group,” said Kim Haines, the special education teacher at Ashland Central School.

The KIDS Group, Haines explained, is “Kids Interested in Disabled Siblings.”

“It’s a little support group I started for the kids,” she said. “I’ve felt the need for one for a long time. We met once a week, at lunchtime, and it provided a place where they could talk about their feelings, and things they have to deal with.”

Danielle, it turned out, talked about other things, too, such as raising money to help organizations that help her brother, and the others joined in.

“The first year, Danielle organized it and did it herself,” Haines said. “But, this year, with the support of the support group, she got more kids involved. She got kids throughout the whole school working. They made posters and raised the money.”

Danielle said members of her support group, “who have siblings with diseases or who are disabled,” were more than willing to help her.

“We had a whole bunch of kids go out and get money and ask people to give money,” she said.

The actual fund-raiser was a walk-bike-athon “at the trotting park in Ashland,” Danielle explained.

“Anyone who wanted to, just came out and donated,” she said.

With two successful fund-raisers to her credit, and now that she’s entering Ashland Middle School, Danielle has decided to try to make this event “an annual thing,” she said.

She is going to call her group “Helping Hand Fund-raisers.”

Danielle is off to a great start as a community leader and volunteer, and she has wonderful support from a caring teacher and many caring friends and adults who believe in what she is doing.

Lynn Boulger, UCP development director, is one of those who appreciate the contributions of people such as Danielle Clark.

“She is 12 years old; entering the sixth grade,” Boulger wrote in a letter telling me what Danielle had accomplished. “Who says one person can’t make a difference?”

Deborah Pappas, continuing education coordinator at United Technologies Center in Bangor, called this week to remind readers that it is time to begin “letting go of summer,” and start thinking about fall-related activities.

Among those activities, of course, is continuing your education, no matter how old you are.

Pappas said some openings still remain in three courses that you may want to consider.

Anyone with an interest in gardening, for example, can take a course on “Making a Perennial Flower Bed,” offered by Claire Ackroyd.

Students will design, construct and plant a large perennial flower bed at UTC while learning everything from basic design principles to bulb planting and mulching.

This course runs 9:30 a.m.-noon for four weeks beginning Saturday, Sept. 8. The cost is $50.

Interested in learning more about the computer?

You can take a nine-week course in “Web Page Design” from 6 to 9 p.m. beginning Wednesday, Sept. 5, at a cost of $110; or a four-week class on “Exploring the Internet,” which includes everything from copyright information to virus protection.

The cost of that course is $50 and it runs 6-8:30 p.m. beginning Thursday, Sept. 13.

For information about these and other educational opportunities at UTC, call Pappas at 942-5296.

Diverticulitis was the culprit that changed a one-week stay at Cub Scout camp at Camp Roosevelt in Eddington into a two-week stay at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor for Tom Gaddis of East Machias.

That he was able to write a note of thanks to those who helped him in his hour of need is indicative of the “quick thinking of Mary Ellen Pedersen, the nurse who sent me to the hospital with Kenny Albee,” Gaddis wrote.

Needless to say, Gaddis’ son Sam, “was upset due to my absence, and went home the next day,” Gaddis wrote.

But, it turned out, that wasn’t the end of Sam’s Camp Roosevelt experience.

With the help of Doug Hitchings, Gaddis wrote, Sam returned to the camp “the end of the last week,” and was able to participate in festivities “such as dinosaur games and campfire songs.

“He was proud to dress up as a cavemen, and Ronie Strout, Linda Faye and Donnie Sprangers went out of their way to make him enjoy himself,” Gaddis wrote.

As Camp Roosevelt celebrated its 80th year, Gaddis expressed the hope that it would continue to celebrate many more significant anniversaries.

He believes attending Camp Roosevelt is a “great experience” that any Cub Scout would appreciate, and he extends his thanks to all who helped make it so for him and his son.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.