Cody and Colten Grandy came all the way from Montana to help the Ronald McDonald House of Rochester.

Monday, June 12, 2000

Cody and Colten Grandy came all the way from Montana to help the Ronald McDonald House of Rochester.

They brought with them their share of 57,500 soda can tabs for recycling.

Their grandfather, Ron Peters, furnished the rest.

At least, that’s what the grandfather would like everyone to believe. Actually, he contributed most of them.

Cody, 4, and Colten, 2, are sons of Rhonda Grandy, daughter of Ron and Lois Peters, 713 Second Ave. NE, Austin.

The Grandy family lives in Helena, Mont., and is visiting their Austin relatives this week.

Ron Peters is a retired former longtime Mower County Sheriff’s Department deputy.

He challenged his grandsons to save their pop tabs and the boys responded.

"Their favorite pop is Grape Crush," the grandfather said.

But as to how many the boys actually collected of the 57,500 total, their grandfather gave himself away when he said, "We’ve been collecting pop tabs for seven or eight years."

The boys are, of course, only 4 and 2 1/2 years old.

But a little fibbing doesn’t matter, when the grandsons are learning a good habit from their grandfather, according to their mother.

"They’re learning how to recycle and to help the Ronald McDonald’s House charity," she said.

On Wednesday, grandfather and grandsons assembled 23 3-pound coffee cans full of pop tabs and delivered them to the McDonald’s Restaurant in Austin for delivery to the Rochester facility, where parents of ill children visiting a hospital can stay free during their child’s convalescence.

According to staff at the Ronald McDonald House of Rochester, one million pop tabs is 16 miles long, or enough pop tabs to stretch from the Minnesota Zoo to the state Capitol in St. Paul.

One million pop tabs can fit into 10 25-gallon garbage bags and weighs about the same as 16 50-pound third-graders.

When recycled, a million pop tabs will provide a night’s lodging for 30 families at the Ronald McDonald House of Rochester.

According to the grandparents and the boy’s mother, the children now immediately snap off a pop tab and save it whenever they drink a soda.

"I just thought it was a good habit for them to get into this early in their lives," the grandfather said.

But collecting pop tabs is nothing new for Peters.

"We collected 20,000 and gave them to a niece of mine in Iowa," he said.

Saving pop tabs for recycling obviously has become a Peters family tradition.