Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

November 18, 2012

Sunday, November 18, 2012



Sunday, November 18, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2004. Back then I was teaching at the George Washington University and some of my students invited us to a Halloween event they were hosting for local underpriviledged children. They wanted me to see the event and they also wanted to meet Mattie. Mattie got dressed up in his Halloween outfit and enjoyed the fact that they were giving away free children's books to the attendees. Mattie loved Franklin (a turtle) and Little Bear and when he saw stories featuring his favorite characters, he grabbed the books. Peter snapped a picture of us reading together in the midst of all the activities going on!


Quote of the day: Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back. ~ Mitch Albom


It is with no doubt that collecting and SORTING all of this candy is a labor of love. Unlike those of you who have children to nurture each day, our nurturing has to be done in different ways. One of the ways to keep Mattie's memory alive and help others this Fall is through our candy drive. The drive has certainly kept me busy, focused, and determined to collect as much candy as possible to keep the snack cart at the Hospital stocked for the year.

The grand total collected is 1000 pounds of candy!!! This is a significant increase from last year, in which we collected 238 pounds of candy. I think the candy drive was a major success this year because I reached out to a couple of my friends who helped to publicize the drive on listservs and through their social circles. In addition, we had Foundation supporters, schools, mom's groups, girl scouts troops, brownie troops, and a temple in Maryland partnering with us to collect candy. We literally collected candy from individuals and groups in DC, Virginia, and Maryland this year!

The picture below illustrates how significant 1000 pounds of candy is, but what you can not determine from the picture is that each of these bags is quite heavy and very fragrant! It took Peter and I several hours to cart these bags down to the car and pack it efficiently in order to deliver them to the Hospital tomorrow. I love the pictures Peter took today because they prominently feature Mattie. Mattie is the motivation behind our efforts and naturally his memory gives us the energy to take on such a large project. For those of you who are interested in specifics you will find a chart reflecting the type of candy and poundage for each item below this picture. To everyone who made this possible, we THANK YOU!!!


 

Candy Type
Pounds
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
63
Whoopers
22
Candy Corn
6
Baby Ruth
22
Nestle Crunch
26
Starbursts
35
Skittles
21
Milk Duds
11
Almond Joys
21
Butterfingers
42
Tootsie Rolls
42
Laffy Taffy
22
Twizzlers
22
Peanut M&Ms
25
3 Musketeers
19
Kit Kat
55
M&Ms
41
Milky Ways
43
Peppermint Patties
8
100k bars
9
Snickers
102
Mini Peanut Butter Cups
28
Twix
39
Hershey miniatures
43
Lollipops
60
Hot Tamales
3
Chips/Pretzels
10
Hard Candy
39
Hershey Bars
42
Chewy Candy
33
Sweet Tarts
38
Granola
8
TOTAL:
1000




 

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