Mr. Fred O. Christopher of Murphy has been appointed chairman for Cherokee County of the Near East Relief for the current fiscal year, and will handle the campaign for that great humanitarian organization here, it was announced from Raleigh by Col. Geo. H. Bellamy, State Chairman.
Cherokee County’s quota is $600, which will feed, clothe, and educate the 10 little children who are motherless and fatherless and assigned to this county for support. So efficient is the work of the Near East Relief overseas that each child can be taken care of and given an education on $60 a year--$5 a month—17 cents a day.
Mr. Christopher will have the active co-operation and assistance of a number of leading men and women of Cherokee County in the great work. His plans will be announced at an early date.
In making the announcement, Col. Bellamy pointed out that although the need has been doubled in the stricken Bible lands, as a result of the recent massacre at Smyrna, the country’s minimum quota has not been increased over last year. More than 800,000 refugees were driven into Thrace, and suddenly thrown on the hands of the Near east Relief as a result of the horrible massacre of 150,000 Christians in Smyrna. Other hundreds of thousands are now leaving Anatolia to escape a similar fate.
The regular quota of Cherokee County will take of its 10 children which is paramount to the feeding of the refugees. All funds received over and above this regular quota will be used to feed those Smyrna and Anatolia refugees, thousands of whom have already starved to death.
The fathers of many of these children, who are now in the North Carolina orphanages at Trebizoid, a port on the Black Sea far removed from the danger of a Turkish raid, were killed in the Great War, defending the oil fields of Baku. The failure of the Germans to get this precious oil supply caused by their sudden collapse, in the opinion of military experts. North Carolina really owes a debt of gratitude to the fathers of these children, Col. Bellamy says.
North Carolina is raising $200,000 this year to take care of the 2,334 children assigned to it. Josephus Daniels of Raleigh is Honorary State Chairman and Col. Geo. H. Bellamy of Wilmington is State Chairman in charge of this work.
From the front page of The Cherokee Scout, Murphy, N.C. Feb. 9, 1923
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