Sisters Anna and Amanda Spanburgh O’Connor and the growing pile of donated gifts in their home. Their family delivered more than 700 presents to kids with cancer at Pediatric Hematology/Hematology unit of the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center.It started as a child’s simple question.
“My daughter, Anna, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010,” said Debbie Spanburgh O’Connor. “She’s 10 now. She is doing wonderful and in remission.
Last year around the holidays, we were at the hospital getting her monthly blood check.“
“She asked me, ‘Does Santa come to those kids on Med 4 (the cancer ward)?“
I told her that he did, and that they celebrated in the hospital, just not at home,” O’Connor recalled.
Unfortunately, the answer did not suffice. “She was very upset” at the thought that these children might not have Christmas, that Santa might forget them.
What to do? “I told her we would deliver gifts to the children at the hospital. Whatever I could afford. So we went out and bought about 20 presents for those sick children.”
O’Connor, along with Anna and her sisters, Alyssa, 15, and Amanda, 8, were soon preparing to deliver those presents to the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology unit of the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center.
O’Connor was born and raised in Broad Channel, as were her daughters.
“Two weeks before we went,” she noted, “I wrote on Facebook and asked if anyone wanted to help me.”
The response was so great that in short order the O’Connor family was able to deliver 690 presents.
O’Connor recalled, “It was unreal, and very emotional and wonderful to see how many people wanted to help us do this!!!”
This year, Anna and the O’Connor’s were determined again that those young cancer sufferers would not miss Christmas.
By early December, they had 263 presents for the children with cancer at the Cohen’s Medical Center piled high in their living room.”
Then, once again an amazing thing happened. “I got an email from the Broad Channel Athletic Club,” O’Connor recounted. “They were giving me all the toys that were donated at the town tree lighting.”
Organizers at the BCAC recalled that after Hurricane Sandy blew through, they were the recipient of hundreds and hundreds of toys so that Broad Channel’s children would have Christmas after all. Knowing what this meant to them, they were looking for a way to pay this kindness forward and a good place to donate the toys they had collected.
Then another amazing thing happened. Under similar circumstances and for similar reasons, Grassy’s Bar and Grill in Broad Channel “ran a Toys For Tots event and gave me all the toys for our toy drive!”
One Friday evening she noted that “I got home from work and on my porch were 130 gifts!”
By the time they were ready to load up the trucks in mid-December to deliver to the hospital, huge light green bags nearly engulfed their first floor. They had amassed 725 gifts.
Seeing that they were not only able to meet but surpass last year’s efforts, O’Connor said she was very thankful to all “for supporting Anna’s efforts this Christmas again!! It is really amazing what this town does, and how much cancer has affected all of us in some way or another.
“But how it also brings people together and how wonderful it is going to be able to deliver again this year all these gifts to the hospital this December. I could not do this so greatly without the help of this wonderful town.”
Among those who helped make this year’s effort possible, she listed the BCAC, Grassy’s, the students and teachers of PS 47, St. Camillus School and The Mary Louis Academy, and the communities of Broad Channel, Rockaway, Roxbury, Howard Beach and even Florida.
She also offered a special thank you to Donald and Nicole Keller for all their efforts.
About her daughter, whose simple question and generosity of spirit started it all; she says “This was Anna’s idea last year. We are just her helping hands!
”
”
No comments:
Post a Comment