Friday, June 5, 2015

Friday, June 5, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2002. Mattie was seven months old and doing what he loved best.... trying to walk. Mattie never crawled and he did not like sitting still either. He always wanted to be up on his feet and moving. I can't tell you how many laps we did around our home!!!



Quote of the day: It has been said that time heals all wounds, I don't agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but is never gone. ~ Rose Kennedy


For the past THREE weeks, I have shared our amazing Walk photos with you. It is my hope that our blog readers have enjoyed them. Whether you were at our event, or weren't able to participate, it is my hope that these photos gave you a good feeling for the full nature of the fun, spirit, and energy of the day. I want to share a last set of photos with you tonight and end by saying THANK YOU once again to all our supporters for making our over $78,000 miracle possible.

When entering our event, the first thing one sees is our Registration Tent! Attendees are greeted with our orange tablecloths, a large photo of Mattie, our sponsor posters and our Schedule of Events. In addition, what makes registration work so effectively are our dedicated volunteers. The lady sitting, is Jennifer. Jennifer has worked registration for us for six years now. She is very dedicated, efficient, and committed to making our day run smoothly. Next to Jennifer is Linda. Linda has been volunteering with Mattie Miracle now for two years and was instrumental to our Registration process this year. Linda and Jennifer greeted attendees, processed everyone into the event, distributed t-shirts and programs, and also accepted donations to the Foundation on the day of the event. So the logistics of what needed to happen at registration is a large task and therefore needs to be managed by an effective team. 

At the end of the day, when we were ALL exhausted (putting it into perspective, Peter got to campus at 5:45am and the clean up ended for us at 5pm) I had this photo taken of us with the registration team. From left to right: Peter, Jennifer, Vicki, Linda, and Mark

This beautiful lady is Junko. Junko is our volunteer coordinator. She has helped me coordinate our volunteers on the day of the Walk for the last six years. This is no easy task because we had 70 volunteers to keep track of this year. Junko greets our volunteers on the day of the event, hands each volunteer a name tag, directs them to assignments, and at the end of the day will even sign community service hour forms for students. 

These are what the volunteer name tags look like! 

There is a story behind these lacrosse gloves! I just learned about it yesterday! When I received our Walk photos, and came across this photo in our raffle tent, I have to admit I was perplexed. Perplexed because I work with Carolyn, our raffle chair, to raffle and showcase the raffle. So I honestly had no idea where this item came from on the day of our event! 

On Thursday, Debbie, our child activities coordinator told me the story behind the gloves! A graduate, Isaiah Davis-Allen, of Mattie's school is now attending the University of Maryland and is on the University's Lacrosse Team. Isaiah has attended Foundation Walks in the past and this year wanted to do something to help raise funds for the Foundation. So he and his team mates signed these gloves and decided to raffle them off at our Walk. We are very honored to have the support of Isaiah and that of the University of Maryland's Lacrosse Team. 

I am ending tonight's blog with two photos that capture our new Walk addition.... the Challenge Cup Wall!!! This is a view of the cups from the side that the volunteers (who are counting them) see them! There were volunteers counting cup colors to keep walkers posted as to which teams were in the lead and therefore doing the most laps around the track. 

To me the Challenge Wall was a wonderfully colorful visual that showed our progress throughout the day. It is on this positive note that I started our Walk photo display and now three weeks later I end on this same photo.