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Charity effort nearing 1 million pop-tab goal
McCOOK, Neb. -- Wauneta Halsey and Marshell Sis of McCook, Nebraska, can barely contain their enthusiasm and curiosity. They REALLY want -- no need -- to know how many pop tabs fill a single animal feed sack.
Anyone want to take a guess?
Wauneta and Marshell will find out, maybe not really soon, as Stephen Harrison's grandmother counts -- one by one by one -- the pop tabs that Wauneta and Marshell presented to Stephen Wednesday morning.
Stephen will be a sophomore this fall at Southwest High School in Bartley. As an eighth grader two years ago, he decided he would collect one million pop tabs before his high school graduation in May 2017 and -- as a member of Southwest's Honor Society -- donate them to Ronald McDonald House Charities to help provide lodging at the Ronald McDonald House for families whose children are hospitalized in Omaha.
RM Charities figures that 1,500 aluminum pop tabs weigh one pound. But, from the very start, Stephen's count has been much more accurate, because his grandmother, LaDonna Harrison, has counted each and every pop tab. "It's a good thing Grandma wants to count them," Stephen says, grinning. "It'd drive me nuts."
Each one of LaDonna's ice cream buckets holds 14,000 tabs. There are ice cream buckets full of pop tabs beside her and her husband Stephen's living room chairs. "The garage leans to one side," grandpa Stephen (J. Harrison) laughed, tilting his hands to show how his garage is side-heavy with ice cream buckets filled with pop tabs.
Young Stephen said Wednesday morning, "I have 510,000 pop tabs now." That's 36.428 ice cream buckets of pop tabs.
That count will jump incredibly after Wednesday morning because Wauneta Halsey and Marshall Sis presented Stephen with two feed sacks full of pop tabs. "That's a lot of pop cans," Stephen said, in awe of the bulging bags.
The story of the feed sacks of pop tabs started when Wauneta posted a copy of a November 2012 Gazette news story about Stephen's one million pop tab goal at Heritage Hills Golf Course in McCook. She hoped her fellow golfers would drop their pop tabs into a jug, and she would give them to Stephen to help his pop tab count.
In steps Marshell Sis, a fellow golfer, whose neighbor Bob Hoyt, a retired mail carrier, has made a retirement hobby of walking his neighborhood's country roads for exercise, picking up pop cans discarded in the ditches.
Marshell asked Bob about the pop tabs from all the cans he collects, and Bob told him he had been hoping to find a worthy cause to donate them to. Marshell laughed, "I was expecting a WalMart-sized bag or two, and Bob came out with these two feed sacks full of pop tabs."
"I really want to know how many tabs there are in those two sacks," he told Stephen with a big grin. "Just imagine how many times Bob bent over to pick up this many cans! Think of the exercise!"
Stephen promised to let Wauneta, Marshell and Bob know how many pop tabs are in each of the two bags, and how many pop tabs he can add to his grand total. That's good, because Bob's started on another feed sack.
Stephen has lots of friends and family collecting pop tabs for him.
Anyone who wants to donate pop tabs to Stephen's "One Million Pop Tabs" project can contact him at (308) 375-4360 (leave a message, if necessary), and Stephen and his grandparents will make arrangements to come get the pop tabs.