Once again the Dover Millionaires worked with Tyrone Elementary School children to collect can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House in Pittsburgh.
Area residents were asked to help by saving tabs for children to take to school.
This year’s collection began in late October and will lasted through May.
The Dover Millionaires have been collecting the tabs off of aluminum cans for about eight years now, averaging around 2,500 pounds of tabs each year. These tabs help defray the costs of housing family members of patients at the Children’s Hospital.
Dover Millionaires President, Don Miller, said the group got the idea to collect tabs from a group of race fans from Towanda, Pa.
“They brought us tabs while we were in Dover,” said Miller.
After that, the group began organizing their own tab collection here in Tyrone. A few years ago the group decided to enlist some help for the project and asked Tyrone Area Elementary students and teachers to participate in the collection. Students were asked to save can tabs and bring them to school. Five-gallon water jugs have been set up in each homeroom for students to deposit their tabs.
Together, the school collected a total of 1,019.7 pounds of can tabs this year for the Ronald McDonald House. This total is up from 870 pounds collected last year, which included fifth grade.
Once collected, the tabs are turned in for scrap weight and the money is forwarded directly to the Ronald McDonald House.
Miller said, “We appreciate the help from the teachers and administration for letting us do this. Without them, it wouldn’t work.”
He also wanted to thank Wendy Miller for all her help and for being the Dover Millionaire’s inside person.
Miller added that collecting that many tabs really adds up. There are approximately 1,263 tabs in one pound. So, 1,000 pounds of tabs contain just shy of 1,400,000 tabs.
This is the third year the group has included the school in the collection process and Miller said they hope to continue working with them every year.
As an added incentive for the students, the Dover Millionaires offer a pizza party for the homeroom that collects the most tabs in each grade.
This year’s overall winning class was Mrs. Hanzely’s kindergarten with a collection record of 95.8 pounds.
Winners were also announced for each grade level and were: first grade – Mrs. Whited; second grade – Mrs. Hasson; third grade – Mrs. Smithmyer and fourth grade – Mrs. Getz.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who helped make this such a successful year.
