Hale Foundation grateful for land donation

The Hale Foundation was formed in 1991 as a not-for-profit organization to help adult men who have an alcohol or drug problem. We provide halfway-house living for 43 residents who receive a 30-day treatment, at no cost to them, from our staff. They are then assisted and required to obtain employment and pay $90 per week for room and board. During their entire stay with us, residents must remain clean and sober (use no alcohol or drugs) and attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in-house and out of the house throughout our community.

WHEN SAM SIBLEY and I started the Hale Foundation, we knew that the residents' rental payments would cover approximately only 60 percent of our budget. The remaining 40 percent must come from us, our friends, foundations, gifts, donations and all kinds of fund-raising. Through the years, we have been given cars, vans, clothing, lots, houses - some with mortgages - and all kinds of properties. The donors all have received tax credits for their contributions. Sam and I are not salaried; we donate our time.

WHAT WE DO and the way we do it works. We are proud of what we do, and of the lives that we have been able to help. The thousands of men whom we've helped in a decade and a half like what we do and the way we do it. Our sobriety success rate is one of the highest in the nation.

In your editorial Feb. 16 ("Caution: big stink ahead"), you refer to the Hale Foundation as being "suckered" and being "played for a sucker," being used to "launder money" and being "asleep at the wheel." You accused Sam Sibley of being sanguine about it all, unconcerned and that he may have been cheated out of $200,000 or more. I take offense to all these innuendoes and insinuations about the Hale Foundation and Sam Sibley. If there ever was a real saint on this earth, it is my friend Samuel Hale Sibley.

HALE'S INVOLVEMENT in this land transaction began in September 2002. Ashby Krouse told me that he had a client who was going to donate a parcel of land to a not-for-profit organization and receive a tax credit for it. He stated that the land could be sold for $25,000. I asked him to have his client donate it to the Hale Foundation, and I put him in touch with Sam Sibley. This was done, and the Hale Foundation received $25,000. We are extremely grateful to the donor, William Hatcher, and to Mr. Krouse.

We are not land developers, land speculators, land appraisers nor land investors. Our business is helping people to help themselves to become sober, responsible citizens.