Letter: Drotos instills a sense of service

To the Editor:

You meet a lot of volunteers working for the Red Cross Blood Bank for 35 years. The donors are truly generous people and the staff is pretty tireless except on the last day when it's time to pack everything up.

That's when the Boy Scouts always showed up.

Most of the boys were too young to give blood but not too young to learn the value of volunteering. Those strong young arms made short work of carrying everything from the beds to the blood out to the waiting vans so that some tired workers could head home a little earlier.

For the last 13 years that I ran the Blood Bank, Paul Drotos was there with the Boy Scouts. He started when his own son was in Scouting and I guess he just liked to carry stuff. He always made sure that one Boy Scout was in charge and that the leader got enough of his friends to show up for about an hour's worth of community service.

Other parents also came to help and provide rides, but Paul only missed a couple of times over all those years.

I sure appreciated those Boy Scouts for all of their help and I think that they learned an important lesson about volunteering. Mostly, a thank you is enough, but once in a while some left over donuts and potato chips from the snack table aren't too bad either.

There are a lot of fine young volunteers in Red Wing today because of Boy Scouts and Boy Scout Leaders. I think Paul set a good example of community service.

I would vote for him for county commissioner if he was in my district.

Marian Gustafson

Red Wing

Tags: opinion, letters, election