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Holidays 2005: Holiday Report
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Beyond Classification
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Charity Report (Have Kleenex Handy)
Those who can remember December will recall that I featured a ‘charity of the day’ for a week on the site. And then I decided to color outside the lines. The spark was an e-mail from my friend Joie, who has passed on the charity gene to her daughter Heidi.
Heidi lives in St. Louis. And there, through an organization called The Crisis Nursery, she found a family that could use some help: A 67-year-old woman was supporting her five grandchildren — the kids’ mother, presumably on drugs, was unable to take care of them herself — on her $750 Social Security check.
What did they need? Gee, start anywhere. And Heidi and her mother did. They asked friends and business associates for donations, so I put the word out. And although this was direct, person-to-person charity — none of you knew Joie or Heidi, and no one would get a tax deduction for helping — you stepped up and wrote checks.
The response was gratifying. Each kid got a winter coat and gloves, 2 shirts, a pair of sweat pants and a pair of slacks, undies, socks, toothbrushes, and one or two toys from their short list of requests. For the Grandmother: a coat, gloves, 2 pair of pj’s.
And then, because the contributions kept coming, Heidi bought the family a new Dell computer with software loaded for productivity, plus some interactive games for the kids. And a printer. And a vacuum cleaner, a set of cookware and bakeware. And, so the family could have a holiday dinner, canned hams, vegetables and fixings — plus a $100 gift certificate to a grocery store for future purchases.
Sometimes a picture tells a story. The one above — of the Christmas gifts you helped buy –tells only half. There are more photos. Because that’s how much we gave.
A few days before Christmas, the grandmother suffered a stroke. (She remains hospitalized.) Friends took in the grandchildren. But the important thing is…..every present got delivered. It took two cars, but the holiday bonanza made it intact.
Joie wrote me: "This type of Christmas giving has to give these children the feeling that somehow, during a time of many uncertainties, the world can be a safe and caring place."
Here’s the thing about life: It’s not neat, like a Lifetime movie. But sometimes — as in this bumpy, sad story — goodness breaks through, and the struggle disappears, and, for a day, people who have nothing but one another can know what it feels like to have a generous, loving band of friends.
I’m in awe of Heidi for pushing on when it would have been easy to stop.
I’m grateful to Joie for thinking of the Head Butler community.
And to you — well, you got the real gift, didn’t you?
