To the editor:

I wish the executives at Target who decided to ban the volunteer Salvation Army bell ringers could have been with me one ugly wet March morning on the docks of Seattle with 2,000 other men in the 1950s waiting to go on board the USS Breckenridge headed for Korea.

I was a homesick PFC thinking about my pregnant wife and my parents, who had waved goodbye to me from the balcony of old Kansas City Municipal Airport as my plane took off for Seattle.

While we were waiting in the rain, miserable and anxious, a white canteen truck with a Red Cross emblem pulled up. Also a blue bus rolled onto the dock. The Red Cross was offering doughnuts and hot coffee for a price. However, uniformed Salvation Army volunteers got out of the bus into the rain and passed among our ranks giving away doughnuts and hot coffee at no charge.

One of the ladies in uniform approached me and said, “Please take this; it was my son’s,” and gave me a small well-worn copy of the New Testament. I made two choices that day. The first was I would no longer donate to the Red Cross. The second choice was that I would support the Salvation Army however I could.

Now I’ve made a third choice, never will I walk down Target’s wide uncluttered, well-polished aisles ever again.

E. G. Hickam,

Lawrence