Something Special

[jeffrey-wimberl]

I have something I want to share with you. This was presented to me by the parents of a certain young man, with great gratitude.
Seven years ago, I saw a six year old child get caught up in the middle of a dog fight. The child was badly injured and needed immediate help. I took him to the nearest hospital where his injuries were tended to. The child was wearing dog tags with his name, address and phone number. His parents were contacted and they immediatly dropped everything and came to the hospital. Because of this incident, I became a very special friend of the family and a mentor for the child. His name is David, and he is now 13. His fondest wish is to become a firefighter, so that he can save people, like I saved him. Recently, the boys father obtained work in Colorado and the family relocated there, but not without giving me something very special first. They gave me this just before they departed and it means a lot to me.

Here's a link, so I don't kill the dial-up folks.

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/jeffrey-wimberly/ffight1.jpg

 

[granitestate68]

You should be!!!

That is probably the most inspiring post I've seen in a long time.

You should be very proud of yourself as your friend is of you. That whole strory is AWESOME. Hope all works out well with everyone.
Lee

 

[Stuart]

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

 

[KCS]

All right. ::insert clap here:: It's amazing what one single such thing can do to turn your life around in a split second. As being a modular club member for many years now and trying to play trains when I can which isn't offten anymore I'm going down to Shriner's hospital tomorrow to play trains and share with the kids there. Some of you might not know what this place is but it's a hospital for children who are exreamly ill weather it be from birth defects to cancer and other life threating terms. So what we do is setup and we are asked to come back every year during a certain time of the summer when the most surgerys are being performed because the trains put smiles on their faces which seem to help them heal faster.

It's become such a big hit over the years that do to an owner change we dropped our Christmas show are a park filled with lights just to set up at the hospital so we now run 2 shows a year there. Some one donated a G scale layout to the hospital about 3 years ago and we also come in and keep it maintained year round. This layout is set up on a timer so with the push of a button the train run's itself through a cycle. They eat it up. About 4 years ago there was one little one about 7 years old named Neal. He was wheel chair bound with a mental and physical handicap who liked to leave his room and get to the layout before any of us showed up to help us with any trains that might have been knocked of the tracks by other kid's durning the night and he did this every day.

As a club we got together and had a plaq made for him for making him a club member and helper sense he lived far away. Something that about brought tears to my eye's when his face lit up with joy. A day not to forget. A show at such a place is not easy to do because of the thing's you see and you feel heart broke about it. It's not something just anyone can do. It took me awhile to get used to it.