Thank You One and All!

By Carol Tobias
NRL PAC Director

The story of Raimundo Rojas is the perfect example of how pro- life hope and determination can change the world.

Hundreds of thousands of you helped win last month's elections. Your countless hours of volunteer work, your sacrificial donations, your personal involvement mean unborn children will have a strong pro-life voice in the White House for the next four years.

In telling Rai's story, I am saying "thank you" to each and every one of you who made a difference.

Mr. Rojas has worked with National Right to Life and National Right to Life PAC since 1991. He has served as NRL Hispanic coordinator as well as an at-large member of the NRLC board of directors.

In November, 1992, the day after President George H.W. Bush lost his bid for re-election, Rai was one of many supporters on the White House lawn to greet President Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle, and their wives as they returned via helicopter to Washington.

For Rojas, this was one of the saddest days of his life. Not only were unborn children losing a great pro-life President and friend, but the incoming Clinton/ Gore Administration had promised to do everything in its power to expand the "right" to abortion. Millions of innocent lives were about to be put in jeopardy.

When President Bush and Vice President Quayle arrived, tears flowed down Rai's face. Rai's grief was so obvious that Marilyn Quayle, wife of Vice President Quayle, tried to console him.
"It'll be OK," she told him. But to Rai Rojas, it would be OK only when a pro-life President returned to the White House.

At that very moment, one lonely leaf blew off a tree on the White House lawn and landed at Rai's feet. His immediate thought was, "Even the trees are weeping!"

Rai kept the leaf as a symbolic reminder of what had happened to unborn babies when Bill Clinton was elected. He framed it, resolving to personally return that selfsame leaf to the White House when a pro-life President lived there again.

This fall, Rojas, who lives near Miami, asked -- in fact, insisted on -- coordinating the important election literature drop in the state of Florida.

With his framed White House leaf as motivation, and a map of Florida posted on his wall, Rojas was a man on a mission: to blanket the entire state with flyers asking Floridians to vote for George W. Bush and protect unborn children.

Being a grassroots activist, Rai began to call volunteers all over Florida. Each time a local coordinator agreed to organize a drop, he would place another pin in his Florida map.

Every day, he watched the map fill until it seemed it could hold no more pins. When all was said and done, Rojas and his volunteers had arranged the largest pro-life election literature drop in Florida history.

Of course, today we know Florida was the decisive state in one of the closest presidential elections in our nation's history. Every vote, every piece of pro-life literature was critical to the outcome.

But it wasn't only in Florida that the election was decided. Rojas's work is just one example of what pro-lifers did in this year's elections. Every volunteer in every state made a difference. Every donor to NRL PAC gave Raimundo and the rest of us the funds we needed to win. You helped win this election, and the world will forever be better because of you.

And, thanks to you, Rai's leaf, a symbol of pro-life hope, can now be returned to the White House.