THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180466
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Amid mist and rain and the offshore passage of Hurricane Gordon, here is word of an event in Hampton Roads, Coats for Kids, to warm your heart.
(Ordinarily, I shun the word ``kids'' as applied to youngsters. Gruff old conservative Col. J. Addison Hagan used to snort that kids are baby goats. ``CALL THEM CHILDREN!'' he exhorted.)
But I lay aside his ban for the sake of the alliterative title of a worthy cause run by volunteers.
The fruits of it will be seen Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., when needy children in Hampton Roads will receive 1,500 coats.
Two weeks ago, 600 were given out. In all, there will be 3,000.
A leader, Patricia Corpew, former president of Grandy Village Tenant Management Corp., recalled Thursday what stimulated her interest in the charity.
In her office near Norfolk State University on a wintry, windy day, she saw outside a boy about 8 ``walking real fast and hugging himself against the cold.''
Concerned that an older boy might have taken his coat, she called him inside and asked why he was in shirtsleeves.
He had given his coat to his younger sister, he explained, because she had lost her own coat on the playground two days before.
``I took my coat off and gave it to her because I can run faster,'' the brother said.
It was as if, she recalled, he could outrun the cold.
Patricia Corprew and some others found him a coat and helped his family.
Soon after that episode, she heard of a student group at Eastern Virginia Medical School that helped clothe coatless children. She and other recruits joined the movement.
In 1988, medical students banded together in an EVMS chapter of the nation-wide Christian Medical Society and began seeking coats.
Coats will be offered Saturday in Norfolk at Lewis Hall of EVMS; at the Effingham YMCA in Portsmouth; and on the Peninsula at the YWCA in Newport News and at the Hampton Ecumenical Lodging and Provisions House - also called HELP House.
Benefits are two-fold, Corprew said. First, coats go directly to people in need.
And second, ``volunteers realize that they can give something back, that they can feel good by doing something for somebody else.''
At EVMS, medical student Jeff Cooper said it was no work at all to help collect, sort and distribute the coats.
And when the children, with their parents, move among the racks, selecting coats and trying them on, the smallest ones preen and strut and peer at themselves in the mirror as if they are modeling.
Sponsors on the Southside include WAVY TV-10, Compeco Cleaners, Swiss Cleaners, Golden Corral and Commerce Bank. On the Peninsula they include Boulevard Cleaners and Proffitt's department store. A contributor this year is Tidewater Community College. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
COATS GIVEAWAY
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB