I recently connected with Dan Casey of the Roanoke Times. He shared some more stories and also let his readers know of our comeback!
A great example of the Get Together Save Together Program - I love this quote from the article. “The key was to get enough people to do a small part of what would become a big project." Green Stamps for Good!
In 1964 Roanoke’s Rescue Mission collected stamps and traded them for a new Chevrolet Nova.
“The stamp project was accomplished by the Ladies Auxiliary — a group of women who met monthly from all the churches. Each church had one or two representatives.” Sylvester Johnson recalled.
“The key was to get enough people to do a small part of what would become a big project." The mission survived on many small donations the entire time I was there. It was also known for its ingenuity in getting people to ‘see’ what could be.
“We had a room where we stored the books of stamps as they were turned in,” Sylvester Johnson recalled. “On the day the car came there was a picture in the paper of a sheet cake made to look like an S&H green stamp.
It’s unclear how long the mission owned the car. It was gone by 1986, she recalled. But the photo of the 1964 Chevy Nova station wagon still hangs on the wall at the Rescue Mission. Kevin Berry of the Rescue Mission texted me a picture of it.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Kevin Berry, The Rescue Misson