Milford chronicle., 1962-04-06
She Serves World
By A. +. NAHAN

/
DETROIT (AP)-A Korean waif
you might say, founded World
Medical Relief, Inc, which has dis
| tributed free since 1858 an estima
| ted $29 million worth of drugs and
medical equipment to every con
tinent-and on what still is a
! threadbare financial shoestTing.
Mrs L. G. Auberlin is World
! Medical Relief, and vice versa, and
one Of her proudest possessions is
copy of the late DR.. Tom
Dooley's last book, THE Night
| They Burned the Mountain" Over
the autograph of the physician who
devoted his life to the people of
Laos is this inscription:
To Mrs. L. Auberlin, with my
warm gratitude for making SO
much of the good in this book
possible.
The Korean waif appeared on a
television newscast with a chap
lain who had adopted him and who
pleaded for help for others like
him
She's NOn-Paid President
Mrs Auberlin saw it, "and some
thing struck me to get some
clothing and vitamins together" "
She did
Now, nine years later and at 65,
Mrs. Auberlin, a Catholic, is dedi-
Gated to spending the rest of her
nl i'm of ft,1I
non-paid president of World Medi-
cal Relief, Inc.
Headquarters is a drafty, five
storied Detroit warehouse that has
warmth all its own for those
who labor there.
Among those who give their time
in sorting and packaging medicines
and repairing and sorting surgical
instruments and hospital equip
ment are retired pharmacists, ac-
countants, doctors, truckers, dem
fists, nurses, housewives d
others. Most give a day a week;
some more
1T rubs right off on you, this
feeling of rendering service to
y.
berlin explains.
Six Full-Time
World Medical Relief neither
buys nor sells. 1t does, however,
pay the six full-time employees,
other than Mrs. Auberlin, it finds
necessary to keep it running. They
are:
A secretary, crater and help
er, truck driver, drug room
supervisor and stock boy.
Mrs. Auberlin wishes others in
other major cities would start
operations patterned after hers.
Shed be glad to pass on her ex-
perience and success formula, "be-
cause we're going to get buried by
incoming stuff as word spreads, if
others don't join u.s."
Her warehouse headquarters is
jammed to the rafters, literally,
and she says: "Materialwise W e
are billionaires, but financially we
are paupers."
Salyaged From Discards
World Medical Relief, among
other things, has equipped top-to-
bottom four-story orphange in
Korea and a 15-bed leper clinic in
Karachi, Pakistan; sent the late
DR.. Dooley LOO pounds of anti
biotics in single shipment; dis
patched an iron lung to Korea that
got there in the midst of polio
epidemic, and equipped a two
chair dental clinic in Royal Oak
Township, Mich. poor, nearly all
Negro community, just over the
Detroit city limits.
En- route to DR.. Patricia Smith
in Kontum, Wet Nam, is every
thing she'll need to equip a 40
bed hospital
World Medical Relief gets all its
hospital and dental office supplies
from discards. maybe obsolete by
1862 American standards, but in
the hands of missionary of jungle
doctors literally life-savers.
It's medicines, and it ships BUSH
els at time, mostly come from
drug company samples donated by
physicians and separated into cate
gories of what it's good for by
volunteer pharmacists and the
paid drug room supervisor.
Among those who help Mrs. Au-
berlin put in the 10 to II hours
daily, including Saturdays, is her
68-year old husband, retired ex-
ecutive secretary of the Purchas-
ing Agents Association of Detroit.
Cash keeps the operation going.
In the year ended last June 80,
in which shipments were valued at
$10.7 million, she spent $4,000
and took in $21,039
A little slopOver in donations
from the year before made this
possible.
Things are SO tight out-of-town
donors are advised all donations
must come freight-paid