Editor:

I greatly appreciated a recent article by Jennifer Wardell, "Overwhelmed parent finds hope at center." Previous to the article I did not know of the existence of this resource and organization in our local community.

As a parent, I feel this organization may be beneficial to me in several ways. If so, I can credit the Clipper for bringing awareness to me where none existed before.

Further, another function the Clipper may have provided is in bringing parties together. I travel much for my work and stay in hotels. This often means that I sometimes collect a sizeable supply of unused "personal cleanliness" items, such as soap, shampoo, etc. in individual sizes. Often I end up at home with more of it than I know what to do with. Reading in your article about the Center's need for donations of this exact type was the fulfilling of an important role by your publication.

As a result of reading your article, I contacted the center and not only found out about even more services (not spe-cifically indicated in the article) that may be of personal benefit to me, but was able to make the contact to start the process to benefit the center regarding making donation(s).

Thank you for your work in this article. I e-mailed as I'm sure your publication would be interested to know of the positive effect the article had.



Thomas Westerman

Centerville