The story below this writing is a old story. The ladies mentioned have since moved on except for Brigette.
We had a good thing going. Problem was finding enough people to believe in the cause to help us to help them. Then some things went array in our lives which required us to take a break for a while. I've always been a firm believer and stood by "Family First". So we all had to break to take care of personal matters. In my case it was my mother's illness and battle with cancer.
I'm back. I will give you a brief on things with "Traditions & Green Ribbons". Many of you know I started a non profit organization for truckers. I can not share alot on these pages because we can not advocate. The Traditions pages will be up and running soon.
Traditions & Green Ribbons was established in 1998." Traditions & Green Ribbons is a Registered Charitable 501c3 Non-Profit Organization (Tax Exempt under the provision of the Internal Revenue Code (ID: #), which is motivated and self-driven by volunteers like yourself. Traditions &Green Ribbons, through it's fund raising events are able to offer assistance and help to drivers and their families in Crisis situations (Based soley upon fund availibilty). You can learn more about Traditions on the web as soon as I get the pages completed. We have begun our holiday adoption campaign for 2005. We are currently accepting donations of goods for the campaign. I will send you the letter we send out for the campaign which explains everything. For more information contact Brigette at the e-mail below.
On to the news story that was written in "The Trucker's News" .....
"Truckers News Magazine"
Pennsylvania woman starts ribbon campaign
to fight trucker abuse by
J. Pratt Austin-Trucks Truckers News March 1999
Stop the Abuse Against Our Truckers." Brigette Fry of Williamstown, Pa., made this statement her mantra nearly two years ago, and supporters from around the world have adopted it as well.
Fry accompanied her husband Paul, a company driver for York, Pa.-based Performance Freight Systems, on a run in the summer of 1997. She became concerned as they drove "all the way across Virginia and there was no place for Paul to sleep. I kept talking to keep him awake because he was really tired. We were in Pennsylvania at exit 31 on Interstate 81 before we were able to stop.
" Fry decided that night that she had to make a statement." "There had to be something I could do to help," she says. Fry called the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and state police and asked about four rest areas that had been permanently shut down in the state. "I got the run-around from everybody. The police claim that the DOT doesn't want to maintain them, and the DOT says that the police don't want to patrol them. I was getting no straight answers," Fry states.
Fry placed a green ribbon on her family's Internet home page with the "Stop the Abuse Against Our Truckers" motto. "My husband told me this would never work if I was targeting the truckers because it is impossible to organize them. However, I thought it might happen if the truckers' wives got organized. That way the truckers could keep on driving with peace of mind while we worked on this," Fry says. The one green ribbon image initiated a worldwide campaign in support of truckers. "I was just sick about how truckers are treated all over - not just the rest area issue, but everything," Fry asserts.
Paul Fry is very proud of his wife's efforts. "She really wants to clear truckers' names. However, she is not for anyone who goes against the law - breaking the laws, or doing drugs or alcohol," he says. Fry says that she now has 400 people on her mailing list, and there are 60 hot links on her site to supporters' websites and e-mail addresses. She has been contacted by supporters from California to Maine, as well as from Canada and Australia. "Canada has gotten really involved. What is
basically their DOT up there is working with one of our people to push the green ribbons," Fry says. Her newsletter, "Traditions," is available online at her website and in paper form via mail.
She sends out green ribbons by mail to interested supporters and is constantly writing letters and calling state officials in support of legislation to help truckers. She even offered to clean and maintain some of the local closed Pennsylvania rest areas but "the state wouldn't acknowledge it."
Supporters of the campaign across the United States have helped truckers and their families in need. A trust fund has been established for a Colorado trucker who will be out of work for a year as a result of burns, and campaign supporters provided Christmas for a driving mother and her children in Iowa. Among the campaign's hard-working supporters are Sheri Robinson of Quinlan, Texas, and Patty Dingus of Fort White, Fla., who both help Fry distribute ribbons and newsletters.
Robinson, whose husband is an owner-operator leased to Tulsa, Okla.-based Coweta Trucking, discovered Fry's website in October 1998. "I did a Web search on trucks when we were looking for load boards, and Brigette's green ribbon site was the first thing that came up. It was truly a blessing, because there is so much that truckers, truckers' wives and families go through. I am behind this 100 percent," Robinson says. Robinson mobilized her 8-year-old son's Cub Scout pack to help the effort. "They have distributed Christmas cards and lollipops with the green ribbons. My 8-year-old loves everything about trucks so he loves to help," Robinson states. She distributes newsletters and ribbons at truckstops when she has manager permission. She is concerned about the lack of lighting in Texas rest areas as her husband was robbed in a rest area near Corpus Christi. "Texas is kind of anti-trucker. There just is not enough lighting. I have all kinds of friends and relatives writing letters to try to get something done," she says.
Dingus discovered the green ribbon campaign on the Internet and joined Fry's effort. "I am the wife, sister, mom and sister-in-law of truckers, and I have seen what truckers go through," she says. Dingus also makes green hat ribbons as well as antenna ribbons for supporters and is concerned about the small number of truckstops in Florida.
She chalked up a win for truckers recently when she fought a weight limit that was placed on a road in her community. "When they paved our local road, they put up 8-ton weight limit signs. Well, there are a lot of drivers in our
community, and they have lived here a long time. It was ridiculous - the sheriff threatened to report my husband if he didn't stop driving down the road to get home," Dingus states. She wrote a letter to the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, and the signs were eventually removed. "No one would admit to authorizing the signs being put up, but they came down," she says.
1996-2008.
