Traveling Through Time With the Shelby County Historical Society
    Feature Article on Neighbors in Action. Topic: WAR
Written by Jim Sayre in September, 1998

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'NEIGHBORS IN ACTION' SHELBY COUNTY'S FOREIGN AID PROGRAM:  "A NEIGHBORLY THING TO DO"

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A proud moment for the people of Shelby County, Ohio. This is how one area resident remembers that hot, steamy July week more than two generations ago when hundreds of Shelby County neighbors acted together to send food packages to thousands of German people suffering from the after-effects of Hitler’s war.

It reminded another Shelby County native of the neighborliness of the old-time wheat-threshing days. "We had a job to do and we did it," World War II veteran John Richards recalls. "Everybody cooperated. It was a natural and neighborly thing to do. I felt that way and so did everyone else."

But, "Neighbors in Action," as the local program that summer 50 years ago was appropriately called, was no wheat threshing or a barn raising. Instead, this was Shelby County’s unique venture into foreign aid, a countywide effort to invite less fortunate people, former enemies in fact, to the community dinner table in a spirit of cooperation, compassion, and forgiveness.

RECOVERING FROM WAR. 1948. Europe still reeled from the devastation of World War II. The Berlin Airlift was underway to break the Soviet blockade of the two million Germans isolated in the western sector of that city. The Truman Administration’s massive program of aid to destroyed European economies --known later as the Marshall Plan-- was being planned.

In the midst of this international mix of American generosity and political insight, Shelby County mounted its own effort to relieve hunger and to welcome the German people back into the international community. An entirely volunteer gesture, Neighbors in Action extended food and friendship to thousands of Germans hungry for both.

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