Local RNC delegates spend time making relief packages

ST. PAUL, Minn. — For a couple of hours Wenesday, a dozen or more Alaska delegates to the Republican National Convention pitched in to put together packages for storm-ravaged portions of the nation’s southern states.

“It’s really a great opportunity, because I feel that the hurricane victims are more important than what we’re doing,” said Dick Stoffel, a delegate from Palmer, as he waited to go inside the convention. “We have an opportunity where we can help those people.”

The delegates filed into one of the halls on the bottom floor of the Minneapolis Convention Center, a huge, open space, and stood along tables, creating assembly lines to fill the bags.

“I was handing them the bags and they were stuffing them,” Stoffel said afterward.

They were joined there by delegates from Missouri, California, Nebraska, New York and points in between, who arrived in shifts.

They were offered free shirts from Target, the company whose corporate logo also graced the bags into which the materials were packed and whose products went inside.

Those products included toothpaste, soap, toothbrushes, granola bars and other snack foods.

The packing of care packages was part of a larger theme, most prominent during the convention’s opening day Monday, as Hurricane Gustav bore down on Louisiana.

That day, Stoffel said, they prayed for those in the storm’s path and took up a collection. He said there are also computer screens at the convention where folks can sign up to donate money.

Since then, the storm hit and has moved on, leaving, at least in comparison to Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of Louisiana in 2003, relatively minimal destruction. Still, many area residents remain displaced. And there are more hurricanes to come before the season is out.

“I think that our main concern is those people,” Stoffel said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.