HALSEY (AP) - Bob Kirk was just 13, that Sunday in 1950 when his pastor at the Halsey Methodist Church gave an impassioned sermon about the power of a single cow.

Just a single cow could help feed starving World War II refugees in Europe, the pastor said, urging his congregants to consider a donation to The Heifer Project, launched to give hungry refugees a continuing source of milk rather than a one-time gift of milk powder.

Kirk's family didn't have much income from their small family farm, but they could spare a calf - so they hauled what Kirk remembers as a “scrawny little cow” to the train station for shipment overseas.

Kirk never knew that the scrawny cow would become the salvation of a widow and her eight children, regarded as a miracle cow by generations.

Until now.

A German public radio reporter doing a documentary about resettlement villages for displaced refugees heard the legend of the cow, on a visit to Reischswalde, where refugees had been given forested plots to clear and farm in 1950.

“The whole village called it a ‘milchwunder' - a milk wonder,” German public radio reporter Armin Moeller told The Register-Guard of Eugene, who interviewed Cornelius Queling, who was a teenager when his family received the heifer, soon dubbed “Anny, the Ami-Cow.” (“Ami” was a German nickname for American.)

“To German standards, (Anny) was a very small cow, but it was a milk wonder - 10 liters of milk it gave daily - about 2.63 gallons,” Moeller said. “The Quelings were nine people without a man in the house. It helped them survive the very difficult year before they could sell their first crop.”

After completing his documentary, Moeller decided to try to track down the American donor whose name and address was on the Heifer Project agreement still kept by Queling. Though Henry Kirk died in 1966 and the farm's address is no longer simply “Route 1, Halsey, Ore.,” the community is small enough that Moeller quickly found Bob Kirk, who lives on the farm with his wife, Carol.

“That was a very fine thing,” Moeller said. “Mr. Kirk at first didn't trust me, speaking from Germany. Maybe he thought I was giving him one of those queer phone calls where I was selling something.”

Kirk, who still raises money for the Heifer Project at the same Halsey church, was thrilled by a photo of the Quelings with Anny shortly after her arrival. He was pleased that the farm they started in Reischswalde is thriving. But he was particularly happy about the legacy of the Quelings' compliance with the Heifer Project requirement that they “pass on the gift” - donating Anny's female offspring to other needy families.

“When one sends something to charity, he sometimes wonders about the results,” Kirk said. “It was exciting, very exciting, to get feedback so many years later that something good happened. Poor as we were, we were able to help someone else, and spread some goodwill toward our country.”