The Wrangell sentinel., 1934-06-22
Social Service Work ln
 North Needs Support

Staff members of the Hudson
 Stuck Memorial Hospital at Ft. Tu-
 kon, Alaska. as well as all ether
 workers under Bishop Peter Trimble
 Rowe, who founded thls great ser vice in Alaska several years ago, are asking themselves the question,
 which even now they hardly dare sto formulate: It is true that this vital part of the great humanitarian pro gram of the Episcopal Church is ill danger of collapse?
 Mails bring rumors that cause hearts of doctors, nurses, teachers and missionary workers to sink with dread forebodings, here Tn the sub Arctic. We are GOing our best, = they say, ito keep these reports from our white settlers, Indians and Es- kimos. We don't wans our patients
 in the hospital, our children in the schools, to get wind oi it.
 Grafton Burke. physician ip
 charge of the Stuck Memorial Hos
 pital, is specific in the urgency of his anxiety. What are we Co do?'
 he asks in a letter addressed 10 Eric w. Gibberd, Cincinnati. executive secretary of the 'Eyerymans Offer ing Campaign" which has been or
 ganized with Charles P. Taft Gs chairman of the National Commit : tee, to meet this emergency of the
 church, caused by serious financial shortage.
 Are we to turn away these sick suffering souls? Here's a woman
 from the southward by plane, an
 Indian woman, utterly helpless and
 suffering from a cancerous breast
 that demands immediate amputa- tion. A white woman travelled re-
 gently 150 miles over a bad trail
 by dog team to be confined in the
 hospital for her first-born. There's
 young white man so badly bitten | by dogs thaL with large gaping
 wounds between his head and feet
 it seemed he had been hit by shrap- nel Then we can't forget little Joe
 Balaam G years old) whom we operated on just this morning. He
 was brought 300 miles with cervical edenitis. l overlooked Silas @ years) who came 240 miles by plane | just because he was sick, under | nourished, listless, b e c aus e he
 could not feel we'll We took him admitted him in the Hudson Stuck Hospital, gave him von Pir- quet test and got positive reac- | tion, and rejoice that we picked him
 up, in time to save him, in his tu- berculous condition"
 In the midst of their anxiety a
 message of hope will, it is expected, fortify these workers to continue ,, their ministrations that cover vir-
 tually the entire vast region of the 1 Yukon. Thus far, the Everyman' 8
 in 52 dioceses of the church. Every 1 effort is being put forth by the Ma
 tional Campaign Committee, of
 which President Roosevelt is the
 most distinguished member, to meet
 the situation. The goal is $500,000,
 to be obtained, they hope, by the support of 500,000 laymen they are
 enrolling day by day.
 That this new group of men, awakened to the broad social service being given by the church, will
 prove in itself one of the greatest permanent assets of the campaign, is the conviction of the leaders. Meanwhile they are sending such | assurances as events seem to justi-
 fly that the forty-year-old fight car | ried on by Bishop Rowe-with dog sled, motor boat and airplane-to | carry a message of practical service embodied in the spirit of Christian ity to the people of the Territory