Bismarck Tribune

By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN

GLEN ULLIN - Half the fun of starting school comes with a backpack full of sharp pencils and fresh clean notebooks.

Thousands of kids don't have that stuff, much less a house, a town or a school of their own anymore. Those are somewhere behind them, buried under the debris of Hurricane Katrina.

Schoolchildren in Glen Ullin realized those kids' lives have been rocked beyond recognition and decided they could do something about it. They gathered up notebooks, pencils, crayons, backpacks, binders and fuzzy stuffed animals and brought them to the school's science teacher, Heidi Smith.

Smith started a drive to collect school supplies after watching the news and hearing about hurricane refugees filling schools and in need of the basics to get started.

Smith said she got the word out to Glen Ullin students last week and gave kids until Tuesday to bring supplies to her classroom. The response was overwhelming. Instead of a couple of boxes she planned to ship herself, she'll have 30 boxes or more to send to Hogg Middle School in Houston.

Smith hasn't figured out the shipping part yet, although Dakota Community Bank in town and the school have said they'll chip in toward the cost. Ideas and help in that area are welcome, she said.

Veronica Kozak, a seventh-grader, moved to Glen Ullin and had experienced a hurricane in North Carolina. "I felt bad for the kids," she said, so she went home and gathered notebooks and pens to send to them.

Katelyn Schirado, also a seventh-grader, tried to relate from her own background. "I figured that they had to leave and didn't have anything, kind of like around here after a tornado," she said.

Brandi Geck, a seventh-grader, said she contributed colored pencils and a teddy bear holding a heart.

"It must be very hard to be at a new school, and no friends, and losing their pets if they had them," she said.

Smith said she was impressed with the contribution from the families and students, from youngest through high school.

"This is a small amount of what we can do to help these people," she said.

Smith said she's still open to donations of school supplies. Anything that comes in after shipping can be donated to the local Salvation Army, which is expecting some refugees here.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren @;westriv.com.)