Dreams Do Come True

By Kelly Lynch

I penned the words Dreams do come true into the Elmo storybook just given to me by five year-old Carlos before signing my name.  “Can you sign mine, too?” asked another voice from the back of the bus.  “And mine too,” said another.  Dream, Wish, Believe, I wrote in another book.  As the little arms of these children reached high above their seats on the bus that afternoon, all holding up their books to be signed, I couldn’t help but think that a dream really did come true today.  A dream for my daughter Shannon, a junior at Lancaster Catholic High School, who just months ago, asked for help in making that dream come true. 

It was right before Thanksgiving.  We had just finished our largest coat collection for the homeless and poor.  We were all exhausted – my parents, my husband Joe, and Shannon’s brother Christopher and sister Erin Mary.  We’d been to Philadelphia, New York City, and Lancaster and distributed over 700 coats in two weeks.  How could we possibly do another project so soon?  But it was Shannon who persevered.  It was Shannon who reminded us that with God we could do all things.  Every year in January, Shannon chooses an anniversary project – a project to celebrate a liver transplant that saved her life at the age of 7 months.  She was dying back then, not expected to live beyond her second birthday.  I begged God to spare her life, to allow her to live, and to grant me the miracle I’d been praying for since she was diagnosed with this life-threatening liver disease at 7 weeks. 

Those were difficult days, days we could never have endured without the spiritual guidance and friendship of Father Mychal Judge.  He prayed with us and for us, continually reminding us of God’s constant love and presence in our lives.  In his brown Franciscan robe and sandals, he taught us how to personalize our relationship with God.  God was touchable, reachable to Father Mychal, and his relationship with Him was so real, so alive.  He shared that gift with us and helped us to love God more simply, more fully, and more genuinely.  That was a gift we would carry with us forever.

When we lost Father Mychal in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, we wondered how we could go on without him in our lives.  It was Shannon who discovered the way for us.  “I’ll collect socks for the homeless,” she said.  She was 11 years old.  “I’ll celebrate my life by remembering his.”  That was just the beginning.  Socks, backpacks, underwear, sneakers, blankets – all the while celebrating her life while remembering his.  What a gift he left us.  What a gift.

And so when Shannon approached us with this year’s anniversary project, our minds said No, but our hearts said Yes.  “I want to do something unlike anything we’ve ever done,” Shannon told us that November day.  “Something with children and something local,” she said. 
 

Shannon in Philadelphia with "Mikie" who inspired this project.

 I looked to my mother.  “What do you think?” I asked her, knowing we couldn’t do it without her support and guidance.  Though she was tired and weary from our coat distributions, my mother could never say No to Shannon.  She and Shannon had a special bond, one that every grandchild hopes for, wishes for.  It began the day Shannon was born but grew each day that she lived.  Lived.  A word we never took for granted.  When Shannon was 7 weeks old, we learned that she was dying, and how we longed for her to live.  How we prayed.  How we hoped.  How we dreamed.  By the grace of God, Shannon’s life was spared when she received a portion of my liver in an experimental living donor liver transplant at the age of 7 months.  That day she began living again.  Though Shannon’s father left us that day, it was Shannon’s Nana who helped her to thrive, grow, heal and live.  She never left her side, and when I couldn’t be there for her, she was.  Through the years, she nurtured Shannon, played with her, read to her, fed her, bathed her and prayed with her.  The bond that developed during those years could never be broken. 

Shannon tilted her head, winked an eye, and looked up to her Nana that November day. “Please, Nana,” she said, “please!  I really want to do this.”  Nana could never tell her No.

Later that day, I received a phone call from the corporate offices of Sesame Street Live in Minneapolis, MN.  They would be happy to work with Shannon and offered her a reduced rate for tickets to the January 5, 2007 performance in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  “Five hundred tickets,” I told them, “I believe we’ll need five hundred.”  We made a phone call to Ken Marzinko of the Homeless Student Project in Lancaster that day and told him about Shannon’s project.  “How will you pay for it?” he asked.  “That’ll be the easy part,” we told him.  With a grateful heart, he said, “This will give these children a memory to last a lifetime.” 

“I know my school will help,” Shannon told us with confidence.  Lancaster Catholic High School – how grateful we were to have Shannon in such a holy place.  It was a place where she could learn, grow and thrive – in every aspect – educationally, spiritually, intellectually and socially.  What a gift it was to have her in a school where the values taught and reinforced daily were the same values I had worked so hard to instill in her since she was born.  I recall the day I phoned the school office last spring, emotional and upset about an unkindness that had been shown to Shannon by her peers.  A very kind and compassionate Mrs. Joann Gallagher listened silently as I explained the difficulties Shannon had experienced in school.  “Shannon should hold her head high and focus on what’s really important,” Mrs. Gallagher told me.  “She’s doing good deeds and often the attention derived from that causes others to struggle.”  “This will pass,” she assured me.  Mrs. Gallagher calmed the fears of a concerned mother that day, something I’m certain was not part of her job description.  And so it seems to be the way of the staff at Lancaster Catholic High School – a team of good men and women working together to help nurture and develop our children into young adults who are prepared to face life ahead.

Jim Rogers and Mary Jo Diffendall presented Shannon’s idea to a very supportive school principal Dermot Garrett who embraced the idea and offered to help.  “We have the best students here,” he told us, “and I’m certain they will want to help Shannon.”  Immediately the words WILL YOU HELP SHANNON? were added to the school website with details about Shannon’s anniversary project.  “We can have the high school students be chaperones,” Shannon suggested.  Within two weeks, one-hundred Lancaster Catholic High School students had signed up to be chaperones, and students at the school raised over $2,500 to purchase the Sesame Street Live tickets.  Ten buses were secured for the day’s event and goody bags were put together for the children. 

Kindergarten and preschool classes at Carter MacRae, Fulton and Wharton Elementary Schools in downtown Lancaster were all invited to participate in this special trip.  “This is an opportunity these children would never have had,” one teacher told us.  “Opportunities are something they lack.” 

On one of the buses from Carter MacRae this morning, children were excited and joyful.  Their eyes widened as the bus headed out of the city and onto the highway.  As it passed farmlands at 50 miles per hour, one teacher told Shannon’s dad, “Some of these children have never been outside of the city before.”  On another bus from Fulton, you could hear the children singing “Can you tell me how to get … how to get to Sesame Street …”  As we approached the Giant Center, the children excitedly jumped up and down talking about Elmo and Big Bird.  Two children walked hand in hand from the Wharton bus.  As they approached the giant glass doors at the entrance, they looked to Shannon’s Nana and feared they wouldn’t be allowed in because they had no ticket.  “Everyone has tickets,” she assured them.  “Don’t worry.”  “Good,” one little girl replied, “because I haven’t got a speck of money, not a speck.” 

The elementary students were paired up with high school students as they entered the arena.  News cameras from NBC and FOX were set up and ready to capture the reactions of these children on tape.  “Where’s Shannon?” one little boy asked me.  “I want to meet her and thank her.”  “Shannon will want to thank you,” I explained to him, “for it was you who made her dream possible today.”  

Before the lights dimmed, Sesame Street character Bert appeared on stage to gear the children up for the beginning of the performance.  Within minutes, Elmo, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were teaching lessons about healthy habits while singing and dancing on the stage.  As Super Grover searched for his super powers, Sesame Street characters taught the audience a Fabulous Five cheer, clapping their hands and stomping their feet.  As I looked in the stands behind and around me, I could see hundreds of elementary students beside high school students – standing, smiling and doing the Fabulous Five cheer.  I was pleased at the interaction between the students and proud of the high school students who so genuinely and enthusiastically became role models for the children today. 

At intermission, my eyes searched through rows of students for Shannon and found her sitting amidst some of the smaller children.  She didn’t see me, but I watched her from a distance as she interacted with a young child named Jazmyn.  With her crisp white shirt, long brown pony-tail and large brown eyes, Jazmyn had made a friend today.  She sat on Shannon’s lap and looked into her eyes, deep in conversation.  It was obvious that Shannon had made a friend today too. 

As the Sesame Street characters said good-bye, the children lined up behind their teachers, alongside their new high school friends and headed outside for the buses.  Shannon’s Nana was busy running from bus to bus with packages of Hershey candy bars delivered earlier that day from a representative of Bishop Kevin Rhoades’ office in Harrisburg.  “No trip to Hershey is complete without a taste of chocolate,” he wrote in a letter to Shannon, hand-delivered that morning along with 500 candy bars.   

As the children enjoyed their taste of chocolate, they left Hershey with a memory to last for days ahead.  And their day wasn’t over yet.  Their next stop would bring them to Lancaster Catholic High School, where lunch had been prepared by Gene Miller of the Food Services Department.  Tables and chairs were all set up and the cafeteria was ready to welcome all 500 who attended this morning’s show.  Crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were on the menu, along with carrot sticks, applesauce, potato chips, cookies, and chocolate milk.  As they finished their lunch, Jim Rogers, invited the students to participate in the Fabulous Five cheer taught earlier by the Sesame Street characters.  As they stomped their feet and clapped their hands, elementary and high school students alike joined together and chanted, “Cause the Fabulous Five can’t be beat!”

As the children departed the high school and boarded the buses for their final return home, they received goody bags with a show poster, a character photo, and a storybook, along with some snacks donated by Giant Foods.  

What was once a life once so uncertain for Shannon had become a life that she now embraced – a life that allowed her to realize the power of dreams.  And today was a day to do just that.  God was present to all of us today.  Very real and very much alive.  He was with us.  Father Mychal taught us how to know Him, how to recognize Him.  And today, we were all so grateful.

“This will be a day these children will long remember,” the Bishop wrote in his letter to Shannon.  “Your hard work and the generosity of all those who made this day possible will be richly rewarded, both in the joy they will experience today and the memories that will last a lifetime.” 

As the last bus left Lancaster Catholic High School that afternoon, I signed one more book.  Never stop believing in the power of your dreams, I wrote.  Because this was something I knew to be true.  Dreams do come true.