AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF WORLDWIDE CARE.

Byline: Arnesa Howell Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

As World War II drew to a close, millions of people were starving in Europe, a fact fixed in the mind of a young American soldier named Dayton Edie when he shared a German family's painfully modest dinner.

``I knew what they didn't have to eat. . . . I was embarrassed to take food from them,'' Edie recalls.

After the war, Edie remembered the family - a mother and her daughter Marta - and, in June 1946 sent Marta a CARE package.

``It had Beech-Nut gum, coffee, peanut butter, bacon rolled in a can, Spam, flour, sugar, shortening, corn meal and meat products. . . . We just stood there and cried,'' recalled Marta, now 70.

And for Marta and Dayton, it also set the stage for later romance. The two have been married for 46 years and live in Louisville, Ky., where Marta helps CARE to help others around the world.

CARE began 50 years ago this week with the first cardboard box shipments of U.S. military surplus food to families in the French port of Le Havre.

From that modest start, CARE has grown into what may be the most useful, durable and respected private-aid program ever. In the last 50 years, CARE has helped more than a billion people in 121 countries.

Last year 90,000 volunteers assisted 48 million people in 66 countries with CARE food, emergency relief, medical supplies, educational aid, agricultural materials and other support.

President Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress put their normal partisan warfare aside Thursday to honor the venerable organization.

Clinton received a CARE package, an original package went on permanent display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and more than 40 members of Congress packed CARE boxes destined for children in Burundi.

CARE's good works are symbolized by the small cardboard boxes that have been sent by the millions to families around the world. The first CARE packages were nothing more than U.S. Army surplus ``10-in-1'' rations, left over after the atomic bomb ended the war.

Each brown cardboard box was reinforced with a waterproof lining, weighed 22 pounds, and had ``CARE USA'' stenciled on the side in black lettering. Inside were canned stews and hashes, cereal and biscuits, fruit and jam pudding, cocoa, evaporated milk, preserved butter, chewing gum and packs of cigarettes.

It cost an American $10 to send the gift overseas to a relative, a friend or a loved one.

Marta remembers the exotic mystery of peanut butter. It was a delicacy from the box that she first ate with a spoon. She still eats it that way.

Called the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe when it was founded by American relief worker Arthur Ringland, CARE was modeled on a pioneering government relief effort after World War I.

Ringland recruited 22 prominent American organizations to help the CARE effort - including the Girl Scouts, organized labor, the Catholic War Relief Services and the Cooperative League of the United States.

CARE has changed a lot since then. Now its initials stand for the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere, and it focuses less on food shipments and more on broader long-term aid efforts - such as agriculture and environment, family planning and population, small businesses, health, education for girls and emergency programs.

``CARE stopped sending packages as the focus of its work in the '60s. Now we send packages primarily in emergency situations,'' said Matthew De Galan, CARE historian. ``We transformed from strictly a relief agency for short-term assistance to taking a longer view of global poverty, social inequities and giving the people both tools and knowledge for lasting solutions to poverty.''

In recent years, the organization has sent mass shipments of school supplies to the children of Bosni and agricultural kits of seeds and tools to refugees in Rwanda. CARE provided some food for 10 percent of the Haitian population during the recent economic embargo.

``You don't just fix the well, but you also teach the women how to use the water so their children are cleaner and healthier,'' explained CARE official Wendy Driscoll, describing the evolution of the organization. ``When the children are healthy, the mother has more time to concentrate on the food.''

She added: ``CARE has grown and matured from a simple plain brown box to a relief project that helps people recover from disasters by giving them the tools to become self sufficient and make a change in their own lives.''

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Photo

Photo: Marta Edie married the man, Dayton Edie, who sent he r an American CARE package 50 years ago.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service