Help drive cancer patients
Many people in our community are battling cancer, and need help getting to treatment. In Philadelphia, the average number of new cancer cases is over 8,000 each year.
The American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program provides rides to patients who have no way to get to their cancer treatment. While we have a group of passionate, dedicated volunteer drivers for the Road to Recovery program, we still need more volunteers so we can meet more local requests for assistance. This will allow patients to get the treatment they need to get well.
As the American Cancer Society Road to Recovery Coordinator at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, I am responsible for scheduling volunteers who drive cancer patients to their life-saving treatment. I know how grateful patients are to our volunteer drivers, which is why it is unfortunate that there are many ride requests each month we are unable to fulfill due to an insufficient number of drivers.
The cancer patients who request rides may not be able to get to their vital appointments, and this can create extra stress during an already difficult time.
I hope that folks in Northeast Philadelphia who are available on weekday mornings or afternoons on a weekly or monthly basis will volunteer to help with this very valuable program. We will schedule you to help with rides when it is convenient for you. Every ride can make a difference to a local patient. Having cancer is hard. Finding a ride to treatment shouldn’t be.
For information on how to volunteer, please contact Gina Hagy at 888–202–1487 ext 65132 or gina.hagy@cancer.org.
Debra Bell
American Cancer Society Road to Recovery Volunteer Coordinator Fox Chase Cancer Center
Post 754 looks for members
Rhawnhurst-Castor Post 754 is open to any veteran who would like to join the American Legion.
Our membership is open to anyone who served in the military. Our post is the largest Legion post in Philadelphia.
We have 620 members. Men or women who would like to join can call me anytime at 215–632–7781.
Dues are $25 for the year 2015.
William Cole
Commander, Post 754
Philadelphia school district is making money grab
As the mayor of Philadelphia and the newly-elected governor propose tax increases so they can funnel more money to so-called cash strapped school districts such as Philadelphia, hard-working citizens should be asking themselves: how much more of this garbage are we going to take? And it is garbage because deep down inside we all know that the School District of Philadelphia could have been given $500 million for this school year and by August they’ll say they can’t open unless they get at least $600 million. Get the idea here? The game is to keep continuously requesting more money than the previous school year and perpetuate it continuously. If they were really serious about fixing the schools, the many millions of dollars already given would have been used to fix the problems and so-called educational leaders would move on to another project. There is no intent to fix the problems because to do so would end the need for a perpetual, ever increasing money grab from hard-working taxpayers.
We’ve been dumping money into the public school system for the last 50-plus years and nothing has improved. No amount of money dumped into the schools is going to fix the problems in the inner cities where schools are at their worst. It won’t make mommy and daddy stop irresponsible behavior like drugs and alcohol and sit down to do math and English homework with their kids. It won’t stop the 14- and 15-year-old girls from getting pregnant and dropping out of school with the 33-year-old grandmother having to take care of all of them in a spouse-less household. It won’t deter personal irresponsibility as long as government keeps giving additional public assistance money to women for having more kids with no man in the house. And let’s not forget the failure-to-educate lawsuits where parents purposely allow their kids to be truant from school, then ignore the phone calls and letters from the school and district so they can turn around and sue for failure to educate their kids. The problems that need to be fixed are societal, and no amount of money gained from fleecing responsible hard-working citizens to dump more money into the public schools will help.
Peter DiGiuseppe
Rhawnhurst
