February 23, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Photograph by Arnold Adler/AETN
The sick children who receive the checkerboard quilts and matching heart-shaped pillows cuddle them close, scrunch them up under chilly toes, and wrap them around slight shoulders. Their parents read the messages scrawled onto them as their children sleep, or — as is sometimes the case — after their children have died.
The blankets and pillows have become the public image of Soaringwords, a charity in New York that seeks to help ill children and their families heal. The group has donated more than 20,000 of each.
But Soaringwords is also about giving volunteers a very personal way to help others. For example, students at New York’s PS 152 (shown here) readied 200 quilts and pillows for delivery to a local children’s hospital by adding inspirational drawings and notes to the pre-made items.
Lisa Honig Buksbaum, the charity’s founder, said she decided to start the group after she was hit with a trifecta of calamities in 1998, including the death of her brother, Gary. Her father battled back from a second bout of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and her then-9-year-old son took ill with rheumatic fever.
“We got a lot of casseroles, phone calls, good wishes, but we didn’t get anything to help me as the parent of this child to inspire him and let him know we were here for him from that deep spiritual place,” Ms. Buksbaum says. “People don’t know what to say, the right thing to say.”
After many early morning beach walks at the height of her son’s illness, Ms. Buksbaum decided to close her marketing business and start her own charity.
The organization’s work, budget, and projects continue to grow rapidly. Last year it had a $400,000 operating budget; this year it has grown to a $1.5-million budget, Ms. Buksbaum says. Revenue comes in from grants and donations of cash and products, as well as income from the sale of quilts and pillows to individuals who want to give them as gifts to families coping with a serious illness. Ms. Buksbaum, who runs the organization with one assistant, says she anticipates increasing her staff size by five or 10 people this year.
“To hear someone say this was the happiest day of my life because I learned that I could help another person, just in that very pure way that children spill their guts and are emotionally present, that’s the gift of every event,” she says.
