ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 23, 1996 TAG: 9601230048
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
A PEANUT butter cookie is just a peanut butter cookie. But a Nutter Butter is - well, it's a peanut butter cookie.
But a peanut butter cookie that looks like a big, flat peanut.
So favored is it by blood donors in Atlanta that some stopped giving when the Red Cross stopped giving out Nutter Butters and started offering less expensive treats. After a front-page Wall Street Journal story about the phenomenon, the cookie's maker started shipping them free to Atlanta blood centers - and donors, presumably, are returning to the fold.
Are they ever spoiled.
Every blood-donation site offers a small snack to donors after they've given a pint, to raise blood sugar levels and replenish fluids. At the Red Cross center in Roanoke, friendly volunteers offer lemonade, coffee, soft drinks, crackers and cookies - cookies that are, hmmm ... "cheap" comes to mind. Small, round, hard, they are available in a variety of colors, if not flavors.
Local donors don't seem to be too worried about it, though. No Nutter Butters is nuttin' to them.
After this month's massive snowfall, the Red Cross's 43-county Appalachian region of Southwest Virginia and southeast West Virginia lost three days worth of blood collections - almost 900 pints of blood. There was less than a day's supply for the 44 hospitals and four dialysis centers in the region. The Red Cross issued an appeal for help.
And people responded. If donors couldn't make it to the Roanoke center, four-wheel-drive vehicles were sent to pick them up, from Bedford County, from Catawba. Some donors said they hadn't donated in 20 years, but promised they'd be back. A lot were first-timers, many of them teachers who had the opportunity only because schools were closed.
By late last week, a little over a day's supply was in the bank. With the daily demand, it will take several weeks to bring the region back to the optimum level of three days' supply. If you've never given blood, or haven't given for a while, think about the need.
For a pint, you'll have your choice of several different colors of cookies. "No Nutter Butters," Bob Lutjen, director of donor resources, admits. "Maybe you're not getting a memorable treat at the canteen, but at least you can go home with the warm feeling that you've helped someone less fortunate."
There's no sweeter reward.
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB