February 25th Speaker

     A little boy named Juan grabbed Jack McCullough's hand and wouldn't let go the first time he visited the Amazon region. Two other little girls attached themselves to his wife, ElaRuth.
     "I was struck by the friendliness. He wanted to hold my hand the whole time I was there," McCullough, former Rotary District No. 5910 Governor, said.
     When someone told him that nearly all the region's children are infested with hookworm and other intestinal parasites, he said he thought, "That shouldn't be a problem."
     "It just really struck me. I couldn't forget that little kid. I thought, 'I'm going to do something about that,'" he said.
     McCullough and his wife shared their story with the North Port Arthur Rotary Club at the group's Monday lunch meeting at the Holiday Inn Park Central. Through a power point presentation, the couple showed images of their return to Lima, Peru and how they worked with an 18-member, all woman Rotary Club to get 10,000 doses of medicine to help children clear up the parasite problem. The problem likely stems from the fact that most children have no shoes, and can become infected because they are walking over remains from poorly-dug latrines, he said.
     Arriving at an airport surrounded by crashed planes kept for salvage, they called their customs experience "anxious" with armed guards and thorough inspection. They finally got a "thank you" for helping the children.
     Through the female "Club Rotario," which met from 9 p.m. to midnight on a Saturday, the couple got their medicine to remote villages.
     "I think there was some divine guidance. Things just fell into place," McCullough, of Nacogdoches, said.
     Their photographs show giant Amazon trees, pink dolphins thought to bring good luck to pregnant women and a watery area where turtles are cultivated for food.
     McCullough recently retired as director of Environmental Science at StephenF.AustinUniversity. As a scientist, he said he had difficulty at the notion of local "medicine men" with dirt under their nails and blowing smoke from cocaine cigarettes over patients. He said local children and their families responded well to the medicine, which should be available for repeated doses.
     McCullough and his wife are elders at Westminster Presbyterian Church. He said this project of meeting and helping these people is  one of his proudest accomplishments.
     "I believe it's God's work," he said.

From a story by Darragh Dorion in the February 20th issue of the Port Arthur News.