Warehouse hums with volunteers

NORFOLK, Neb. — Neat stacks of identical brown boxes line the length of the former Walnut Grove feed mill building, now the Orphan Grain Train warehouse.

Tracheotomy tubes, catheters, surgical gowns and gloves and more medical supplies crowd the shelves in the back of the warehouse, while metal walkers fill a small loft.

Stuffed animals spill out of a barrel, and bicycles hang from the ceiling.

Piles of clothing are stacked on the long tables that stretch down the middle of the warehouse’s front room.

On most days, the Orphan Grain Train warehouse is buzzing with volunteers who come from all over the Midwest to sort the clothing, shoes and other items donated by the people around the country.

Since its inception in 1992, the Norfolk-based organization has shipped more than 63 million pounds of goods around the world and has expanded to include 19 divisions around the country.

Before being packed, each piece of clothing is examined. Dirty clothing is washed; torn clothing is repaired; buttons are replaced.

Volunteers knowledgeable about medicine sort the medical supplies while others repair bicycles. Still others operate forklifts that move the pallets full of boxes.

Doug Trampe, who directs activities at the warehouse, estimates that about 3,000 volunteers have worked at the warehouse since it opened in 1998.

They have packed about 52,000 boxes that have been loaded into about 1,000 containers and trucked to some other part of the country or to Omaha, where they are loaded onto a train that is bound for a shipyard.

Most volunteers come because they want to serve.

Jean Ternus of Humphrey, Neb., wasn’t ready to retire three years ago when her husband, Jim, sold his business.

So she works at the Orphan Grain Train four days a week.

The pay doesn’t come in dollars and cents. Instead, it’s doled out in satisfaction.

“This makes me feel good,” Ternus said.

More volunteers man the 20 regional division offices and warehouses scattered around the country — so many that Clayton Andrews, who founded the Orphan Grain Train with the Rev. Ray Wilke, hesitates to even estimate the total.

“Hundreds,” he said.

More volunteers work at missions, schools, clinics and other facilities supported by the Orphan Grain Train.

Volunteers do more than pack boxes and load trucks.

In 1998, they helped replace more than 130 miles of fence in the Dakotas that were destroyed by blizzards and the resulting floods that ravaged the area the year before.

The estimate in donated man-hours was more than 4,000. The value of the donated trucking, labor and food, as well as $86,000 worth of posts and wire, was more than $400,000 for the project.

In 2004, volunteers helped feed fellow volunteers who had come to Hallam, Neb., to help citizens clean up debris left when a tornado destroyed much of the town.

More volunteers drive the trucks that transport goods around the country. They include Lloyd Dennert of Columbia, S.D., who has logged more than 500,000 miles.

Students at Northeast Community College’s truck driving school also drive trucks at times.

It’s impossible to note every job filled by volunteers. Yet their value has not been lost on Trampe and other Orphan Grain Train officials.

You know the saying, Trampe said. “Volunteers aren’t paid because they are worthless; they’re not paid because they are priceless.”