The Denver Post
"Firefighter bracelets seek home: Money Talks"
September 9, 2002
Sec A, Pg 2
Author: Dick Kreck

Firefighter bracelets seek home: Money Talks

Are we 9/11 saturated? Kelley Horton is beginning to wonder. She founded United We Stand, an Englewood company producing remembrance wrist bands to honor firefighters.

She's tried, without luck, to get a local retail chain, any chain, to carry the bracelets. "Most of them say, 'We can't help you. We've already given."' Missing her point, some bury her in paperwork; others put her off to an unspecified meeting date.

She doesn't want a handout. "After the attacks, like a lot of people I spent two or three days sitting in shock. I gave blood and donated money. But I thought there's got to be more that I can do." Mulling it over, the former owner of a high-tech recruitment company decided that her contribution should reach beyond a 9/11 tribute.

She created a series of commemorative bracelets, similar to the POW/MIA model.

It's not about the money. There is no hidden campaign. "It's all on my own," Horton says. The aluminum bracelets are being sold for $10 with September profits going to the Denver Firefighters Orphans Fund, the Colorado State Fire Chiefs Foundation, the Colorado Professional Firefighters Foundation and the Colorado Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

"It would be great if people could buy them at a store," she says. "People call and ask, 'Isn't there any place I can go pick this up?"' No, there isn't. Horton sells them only by phone at 303-788-0402.

Money talks

Gotten one of those dollar bills marked "I Am Not Terrorized"? I have two.

They're the work of a New York City artist named David Greg Harth, whose studio is in lower Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center.

He and his friends have stamped more than 100,000 $1 bills with the mottos "I Am Not Terrorized" and "I Am Not Afraid" as his answer to the terrorists. "Communicating through my art became my way of helping myself and other Americans heal," he says. Those dollars are all over the world.

Harth, whose history of stamping bills has appeared in New York magazine and The New York Times and on CNN Headline News, notes that stamping bills does not render them unfit for circulation.

My two bills, brand new, came from Harth himself. I will pass the word, and the bills. Part of the deal is to send him two unstamped bills in exchange.

In all the papers

I don't have the wackiest writing job in Colorado. It's nothing compared to the penned production of John Lynch of AJ Indoor, a Denver-based marketing firm.

Lynch's most recent epic involved writing about Charmin toilet tissue. I was surprised to learn that there is a national ad campaign to "put Charmin in the hands of thousands of needy consumers when they need bathroom tissue most."

AJ Indoor has put up bathroom billboards in 30 area stalls. "We're having a hard time keeping the dispensers filled. We have to fill them twice a day."

Is there some intestinal epidemic I'm not aware of?

Around Denver

Community, school and church groups will take part in radio station KALC-FM's "Freedom Bell" reading of the names of those who died in the 9/11 attacks. The program, which begins at 6:45 a.m. Wednesday, will be broadcast live. ... Last roundup: Long-time Boulder cowboy favorites Dusty Drapes & The Dusters will reunite, probably for the last time, on Oct. 4 for a concert at the Boulder Theater. ... Craig Meis, who helped resurrect the Ski Train to Winter Park in 1987, has departed to be a consultant, elevating the train's longtime general manager Jim Bain to vice president. The train begins its winter runs on Dec. 21. ... Reminder: The Film on the Rocks series at Red Rocks Amphitheater ends tonight with a screening of "Gladiator" after a performance by Opie Gone Bad. It all starts at 7. ... Quotable: "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." - Eldridge Cleaver.

Back to press