This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
A number of important things happened in 1950. North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel in June. President Truman authorized development of a hydrogen bomb. Alger Hiss was convicted of two counts of perjury. Congress authorized a minimum wage of 75 cents an hour. William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, and CBS was licensed to begin broadcasting color television.
A few of these events eventually filtered down to us Rock Islanders, but we celebrate 1950 for a different reason. 1950 was the year Lost Nation, Iowa, was found.
That October, six junior high girls in Lost Nation were looking forward to Halloween with a new worry. Were they too old and too sophisticated to go tricks-or-treating again? At the same time, they weren't quite ready to give up all their childhood pleasures.
They hit upon a perfect solution: they would go tricks-or-treating, but not for gum and candy. They would collect money for unfortunate children around the world. One of the girls' mothers thought it would be appropriate to give the money to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, then only two years old. Pastors of all three churches in town—Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian—agreed, and on October 31st, off the girls went. That evening they collected $20 and sent it to UNICEF.
The Lost Nation girls received much publicity for their idea, and it spread to other communities. Soon, trick-or-treating for UNICEF became a national practice. By 1959, ten thousand communities in the United States were collecting money for unfortunate children. The practice spread to Canada.
By then, there was a whole network of organizers, UNICEF collecting boxes, drivers to take children to the neighborhoods, and printed promotional material—material in which six teenagers from Lost Nation, Iowa, get credit for an idea that has helped thousands of other children living in poverty, hunger, and neglect, living in the world's lost nations.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
