Do-gooders need a few good gigs
By BILL CAMPBELL, Daily News Columnist
(Courtesy of Northwest Florida Daily News)

It's curious that the local organization doing the most charity work is the one most involved with massive amounts of firepower.

Firepower as in gunships that go bang in the night.

The McCoskrie Threshold Foundation has long delivered medical supplies, clothing, food, blankets and presents to people as diverse as the Hmong tribesmen in Laos to orphans in Honduras.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

Pretty good for a bunch of old Air Commandos.

Fort Walton Beach's Heinie Aderholt, a retired one-star who ran the covert air war in Laos during the Vietnam mess, founded the Air Commando Association in 1967.

The war we swore we weren't running.

After the shooting stopped, it was decided a foundation should be set up to provide medical relief to the poor of Central and South America and Southeast Asia.

Thus was born the Threshold Foundation, later amended to the McCoskrie Threshold Foundation after R.H. "Mac" McCoskrie, former task force director for the Air Commando's Central American Task Force.

Mac died after pouring immense energy and brainpower into the cause.

I could go on for pages, but if you hit Google and look for the McCoskrie Threshold Foundation you'll find plenty to interest you.

If you aren't on the Internet, you can spend the time asking yourself what "hit Google" means.

So with that as prologue, one of the paragons behind the foundation, John Grove, saw fit to awaken me from my slumber yesterday.

OK, so it was 10 a.m. I like to read until 2 or 3.

John had a problem.

The foundation has gotten its hands on a bunch of junked Department of Defense computers.

Without hard drives.

DOD was worried what might be on the drives, so they kept them.

Judging from the amount of jokes I receive from DOD personnel, I can see why the government wouldn't want this stuff made public.

So we need hard drives.

With at least two gigs.

If you're not on the Internet you're thinking, "The last time I got two gigs it was for a poorly made bed and unshined shoes."

You're forgiven.

Windows 2000 takes one gig to operate, leaving one to play with.

The first load of computers will be donated to a very poor school district in the Selma, Ala., area.

But we need your old hard drives to make this happen.

Call John at 243-4010 if you'd care to help a bunch of very "Special" people do good things for the less fortunate.