Roses for Helen - Reflections on a thrilling day

GOPFighter

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Fri Mar-31-06 08:49 AM
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Roses for Helen - Reflections on a thrilling day

I could hardly sleep last night. I kept thinking about Helen, the history she has seen, and what she is going through today, treated like a joke by the mainstream media.

The roses meant a lot to her. She told us how much hate mail she gets. Mostly from men, mostly scatological. These flowers couldn't have come at a better time. Which brings me to Helderheid and her wonderful idea. I've often seen good ideas like this fail because a lot of people bail out when the work gets too hard. Helderheid not only came up with a brilliant suggestion but she pulled it off despite being 2,000 miles and two time zones away from Washington. This was not a simple project. Helderheid had to coordinate the delivery with Helen's schedule, line up volunteers to put the flowers in the vases, and make sure everything happened on time. A major hiccup occurred when the vases did not get delivered with the flowers. Helderheid had to track them down, and then plead with FedEx to deliver them ASAP. When they finally arrived by special courier hours later, 5 out of the 48 vases were broken. This set us back, but because of Helderheid's diligence we managed to get everything done before Helen left for the day.

I also want to mention the big lift we got from the pizza you had delivered. I didn't realize just how hungry I was until I opened the box and saw the huge chunks of sausage and melted cheese. No meal has never tasted so good!

Helen's office is in the Hearst Newspaper's Washington Bureau Washington office. We didn't get to see her office, we tried hard not to obtrusive. We worked in a conference room off to the side of all the reporter's cubicles. Fortunately we were near the office's kitchen where we could get plenty of water for the buckets and vases (we cut and trimmed the roses first and put them in large buckets of water until the vases came). Kristen, the Bureau Manager, graciously offered us sodas from their well stocked refrigerator (she took our intrusion into her office like a pro - she kept popping in and asking if we needed anything). The conference room had a glass wall allowing all the reporters to watch us work. When we finished a lot of them came in to marvel at the display.

There were five or six different types of roses. All were beautiful and were delivered in excellent shape. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about handling roses with thorns! We all went home with "souvenirs" of our fun with flowers.

I know many of you dug deep into your pockets to contribute money for the flowers. I want to assure you, it was money well spent. Helen was truly touched by your generosity. She spent a long time looking at the list of names of the contributers. She said "How can I ever thank so many people?" So I want to pass her thanks on to each and every one of you. Also, to those who couldn't give, or became aware of this project after contributions stopped being accepted, your support was very apparent by the messages you posted here. We asked her to go on DemocraticUnderground.com and read your messages. If she does she will be overwhelmed by the tremendous affection we have for her.

I'll close by saying, thank you all for this experience. I will always treasure the time I got to spend talking with the Dean of White House Reporters.

Here are a few more pictures.

Rainer and Paula, putting the trimmed roses in the vases

1,200 roses (don't miss the vases on the floor!)

Helen. Nearly lost in the roses.