To the editor:

On the letter, “Help us fill more care packages.”

This story brought a memory that links two parts of my life. When I was a child in a grade school in a small Idaho town, I helped put together CARE packages for refugee children in Europe after World War II. We thought about the children receiving those packages — the toothpaste and washcloths and soap and pencils, occasionally a roll of Lifesavers — and found it hard to imagine their lives or the faces of those children.

Fast forward to 1994. I was working on my graduate degree at Oregon State University and working in a campus office to pay the bills. One day, in an idle coffee room conversation, one of the women mentioned growing up in Europe as a child after the war. Her story was a difficult story and we were all touched by it.

Then she said, “It was the little CARE packages that got us through as kids. They meant so much.”

When I told her I had helped with those packages as a child, we both shed tears. Over half a century and thousands of miles our lives had touched each others and now, there we were, good friends in Oregon.

These packages and gifts mean a great deal to those who receive them. I will be participating in this project, and as a writer myself, I’m especially gratified that the children want pens and paper. Of course, I hope others will join in this effort. It’s a small thing to those of us doing the giving and a very big thing to those who are receiving.

By the way, my friend told me that the one thing she always hoped for in the packages was a doll. None had come. But she has a doll now. How could I let that child’s hope go unfulfilled?

Molly Larson Cook

Coupeville