Veronica Barry and some other moms living around P.S. 98 in Douglaston, wanted to do something to help earthquake victims in Haiti, but felt helpless.
“Since few of us have any medical skills we tried to figure out what we could do,” said Barry, Director of Career Services at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point said.
But she did have a background in shipping and transportation. “I found a press release from Amerijet International, stating that they had teamed up with a fuel company named World Fuels to provide a [relief flight to Haiti],” Barry recalled.
Barry said that she contacted Keisha Frederick at Amerijet International, Inc. at JFK airport. Frederick, an Army veteran, had taken the lead on the project for the cargo company. “She described this project as her ‘baby’ and told me to come ASAP and that she would send whatever we could collect,” Barry said.
After one email and a few Facebook messages, Barry and her friends collected more than 600 pounds of rice and dried beans during the Martin Luther King holiday. These arrived in Haiti two days later.
The original email circulated through the northeast Queens neighborhood, and by Saturday, January 23, the moms had a crew of volunteers – midshipmen from the nearby Merchant Marine Academy with two pickup trucks – and permission to use the parking lot of the Community Church in Douglaston as a staging area.
By 10 a.m., a steady stream of moms, dads and little kids – some barely able to carry the sacks – amassed enough rice, beans and tents bring the total to 2,234 pounds according to the freight scale at Amerijet’s JFK cargo center.
