YELL DAY PREPARATIONS

YELL Day efforts began at about 3:30 this morning with a crew from the Southeast Missourian's circulation department getting papers ready for volunteers to pick up. It won't end until this evening when a copy of the edition is buried in a time capsule.

And preparations to fill the annual paper that raises money for literacy efforts and organize the volunteers who sell it began months ago.

YELL, Youth Education Literacy and Learning, is a program that awards grants to literacy programs in Cape Girardeau County and Scott City. Much of the funding for YELL comes from the sales of the annual YELL edition and sponsorships in the form of ads in the edition. Since the first YELL edition was published in 1991, the annual effort has raised almost $240,000 for literacy programs.

As a way of commemorating YELL for the millennium, a copy of this year's edition will be buried in a time capsule, said Karen Green, president of the board of the YELL Foundation and marketing director at Mercantile Bank.

The time capsule will be buried next to the flagpole near the Arena Building cornerstone in a ceremony that will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday Sept. 14. Plans are to open it in 2050.

At Tuesday's burial ceremony, entertainment will be provided by Robin Hosp, a popular singer from Jackson, and Liesl Schoenberger, a local high school student who has won competitions for both her violin and fiddle playing. Speakers will be high school student J.P. Limbaugh, known for his oratory skills, and the Rev. Walter J. Keisker, a long-time Lutheran pastor who turned 100 this year.

If Mark Kneer, circulation manager for the Southeast Missourian, looks tired by the end of the ceremony, forgive him. He and his crew were due to arrive at the paper about 3:30 a.m. to get the papers ready for volunteers to pick up around 5:30.

But Kneer's efforts for YELL this year actually began in June when he started organizing volunteers from groups and businesses to sell YELL editions on street corners. Some 40 to 50 hours go into coordinating the selling effort, Kneer said.

Preparing the copy for the YELL edition was also a task. The essays from third graders on their predictions for the future had to be typed in. That was more than 600 column inches of copy. There was also research on the historic front pages, scanning in historic and family photographs and reporting and writing stories on YELL efforts.

"It's a lot of work," Kneer said of the efforts made by nearly all newspaper departments. "But it's for a good cause."

The work will continue, as a committee from the YELL Foundation will now seek applications from literacy programs requesting grant money. The committee will then determine the best use for the funds raised, which should be more than $30,000 based on past years.

So enjoy reading this YELL edition, keeping in mind that the money paid for your copy will go to programs that may make it possible for others to read YELL papers in the years to come.