Tabs For Tots—

Helping Shriners Help Kids

By Shannon Hicks

People around town — and everywhere, it seems — have been setting aside the tabs from soda and beer cans for year. Many of those tabs are set aside to be donated to the Shriners, and last week many of those tabs were put together and given to their intended recipient.

George Mattegat, a former Grand Master and longtime member of Hiram Lodge in Sandy Hook, was given thousands of tabs by members of Spay and Neuter Association of Newtown (SNAN) on July 19. The donations dropped off by the four SNAN volunteers nearly filled a green recycling bin.

“We spend $1.7 million a day on children,” Mr Mattegat said. “We have 22 hospitals — [four] of them are burn centers — and there’s absolutely no charge to them for their top-notch care.” Shriners Hospitals for Children have, since being founded in 1922, provided X-rays, outpatient and outreach clinic visits, applied braces and prostheses, performed operations and offered physical therapy treatment to well over 187,000 children. The network of pediatric specialty hospitals is located across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Any child with an orthopedic need can receive care at a Shriners Hospital regardless of financial status or insurance coverage. The child must be under the age of 18 and have an orthopedic need that can be treated by the staff. There is no need to know a Shriner or be related to one to be accepted as a patient.

Shriners Hospitals maintain teaching affiliations with Boston University School of Medicine and Albany Medical Center. Additionally, Shriners Hospitals provide training to undergraduates and graduate students from area colleges and universities in the fields of nursing, occupational and physical therapy, prosthetics and orthotics, motion analysis, child life, and social services.

Something as simple as a tab from an aluminum can, when collected with other tabs, helps pay for that care. The Masons take those tabs and turn them in for cash. It takes 1,800 tabs to make one pound.

The Helma Court No. 64 Ladies Oriental Shrine of North America founded the Aluminum Tab Collection/Recycling Project in November 1989. Since then, the Shriners of America, as well as many Masonic lodges, have adopted the program and named it Tabs For Tots.

More than 494,700 pounds of tabs — nearly 250 tons — were collected from 1990 through March 2005.

The money received from the recycling of the tabs is used to buy medical and nonmedical items for Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Chloe Mora, a 13-year-old Newtown resident, is a recipient of the Shriners’ care. The scoliosis patient has benefited from free braces, follow-up appointments that make sure the braces are working effectively, and even X-rays to see how effectively the braces are working.

Anyone can collect the tabs from aluminum cans. Containers large and small, sealed envelopes, even sandwich bags have appeared in containers that Mr Mattegat has set up around town. He has been putting out containers and receiving donations for so long that friends of friends have sent him packages of tabs from across the state and beyond. Tabs arrive at his home from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and even New Jersey, he said.

Ann Manley, one of the ladies with tabs for Mr Mattegat last week, also had a huge collection from a friend of hers — Fran Dralus, who collects from so many of his friends and family that he fills nearly a coffee can each week.

In Newtown, tabs can be dropped off at Lockwood Lodge, 139 Toddy Hill Road; Newtown Social Services, 3 Main Street (use the entrance from the lower parking lot at the police station); and the offices of The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road.

“Every bit counts,” said Mr Mattegat.