Today has been a day of many thoughts..... There seems to be so much going on. It's election day... I've got two sick kids with colds- Tyler and McKay... John's in Logan finishing up some paper work with the purchase of the new van... rescheduling McKay's surgery to remove the pins from his hips- I had to cancel due to his congestion and fever... and so I took a break and grabbed a book. This book that was given to us on our Make-A-Wish trip. It's written by the man who came up with the whole idea of Give Kids The World (where we stayed in Florida). Families get to stay here when a child wishes to see Mickey Mouse or wish to go to Disney World. The whole idea is amazing. But in this book you get to know him and some of the history behind it all. He is a survivor of the Holocaust and his story is very interesting. Today I was touched again when thinking about this whole experience we just went through a few weeks ago.
The rest of what I've written is taken from the book "
Gift of Life" By Henri Landwirth.
Every life is touched by miracles. Sometimes people just don't recognize them, but that doesn't mean that what they are experiencing in not a miracle. My own life has been touched over and over again by events, by happenings which I cannot define any other way, but to call them miracles.
There were miracles in each of my six lives, but none as profound as what I'm experiencing today. When the Castle of Miracles was under construction, Bob Richards was the general manager of J&N Stone and they were doing some work on the castle. Bob was 46 years old then with five children, and he was battling terminal colon cancer.
"I'm a Christian," Bob explained, "and I believe what happened to me at Give Kids the World is a miracle from God. The more I got involved at the Village, the better I felt. The less I worried about my own health, the more my health improved. I'm cancerfree today and I think working at the Village is an important part of the reason why. Wonderful things happen to people who help at the Village."
When we were first opened, we didn't have any blankets or pillows. I gave my assistant, Jan Silver, several hunddred dollars and asked her to go to Kmart and buy some pillows and sheets and blankets. As I finished saying that sentence, a big tractor trailer filled with pillows and blankets pulled up right outside my window.
These connections of faith seem to happen all the time. Small wonders. Since Give Kids the World began, I've witnessed dozens of things I would call miracles. As I look back at my life, I can see a steady strem of events, from the survival of my sister and me, to the Mercury Years, to Give Kids the World. Miracles happen. They are real and tangible. There's no question about that. We just have to be willing to see them.
At Give Kids the World, every child, both the wish child and siblings, receives a toy each day when the family returns from the theme parks. This means that we use more than 60,000 toys each year. Because we use so many toys, I wanted to buid up an inventory. I asked Julia Hobbs to write a letter to every toy company in the country asking for donations for the kids. The very nextday , a man called from Roxbury Toys in New Jersey. He had a tractor trailer full of toys for us.
The Village provides a library of videos for the children to watch. One day, as I walked through the administrative building, I noticed our video supply was low. I asked one of the staff to call disney and see if they could send us some more videos. A big box from California waited for me on my desk. That's right, it was filled with videotapes for kids.
The greatest miracle is building Give Kids the World on a handshake and a prayer. The companies have taken the business side out of it. They benefit from the goodwill, but they remove the business from it. This is a uniquely American story.
Our foundation is unique in other ways also. No other foundation gives a vacation for the whole family. None. This is the only one in the world. Our Village is unique because it is the only place tht offers the gift of memmories for each member of the family individually and the family unit as a whole.
In 1996, our corporate sponsors will provide over $12 million dollars of services and incidentals for the families. The number of people that Give Kids the World serves continues to grow. This year, more than 4,500 families will come to Give Kids the World from 45 countries across the globe and no one will be asked to pay anything. By the end of 1996, we will have served more than 27,000 children and their families.
We have no contracts, no legal agreements. We do this in the spirit of generosity which makes America unique among all the countries of the world. Such kindness, all rooted in our collective love and caring for the children couldn't happen anywhere else.
