Letters of Love: Nonprofit provides emotional support for children in hospitals
ORONO, Minn. — It's the time of year for giving and a Minnesotan is doing so on a scale so large, it can't be measured.
It's a mission one woman started after her greatest gift was taken away.
Grace Berbig grew up with so much love, but also a lot of pain. When she was 10, her mother was diagnosed with leukemia and eventually lost her battle with the disease.
"When she got sick, my sisters and I decided that we wanted to give her that love back through notes. So we would come back from school every day and just make these piles and piles of cards for her," Berbig said. "I have such wonderful memories of going to the hospital and getting to visit her, jumping up on her bed. And she would go through every single one and point out what she got in each one, and she would plaster them on her hospital walls and they made her so happy. I remember she just adored them."
So, when Grace was 16, she started a club at Orono High School where students write words of encouragement to children in hospital or hospice care. It's called Letters of Love.
"She fought really hard but she lost her battle with leukemia, and after that I just kind of vowed to myself that I wanted to take this terrible thing that happened, losing my best friend, and make something positive out of it," Berbig said.
Five years later, Berbig is back to see the fruits of her labor.
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Hundreds still show up at Orono High School on Tuesday mornings and that's not even half of it. Letters of Love is now in 36 states and 18 countries.
"It's so cool to me," she said. "Cool isn't even a good enough word, it's so meaningful to me that it's grown so much."
Just this month, Orono alone is pumping out 10,000 cards via thousands of pumped-up students: A mission that's already been accomplished.
Jae Stanberry has spent many a week in a hospital bed. She has a chronic intestinal illness. She also has a treasured stack of cards.
"Once I got those, I thought there is someone out there who really cares," she said.
Turns out, there are a lot of people who care.
