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12 February 2005  

We select our themes and crafts several months in advance, which gives us time to come up with ideas on what we want to have the patients work when we’re on the air. When our theme “Heroes” and crafts for Police, Soldiers and Fireman came up on our schedule, we started thinking about ideas on how to salute our heroes. How can we make this a really special craft?

Webster’s dictionary says, “hero: one who shows great courage”, so what better way to salute our heroes than to honor them with a craft made by those who show great courage every day themselves. On Super Sunday, we had the patients decorate paper badges for the police, which we in turn presented to the Security staff at Texas Children’s Hospital, who are Houston Police Department officers and protect us every day, both here at TCH and around Houston. Then on Terrific Tuesday we had them decorate yellow ribbons in support of our troops overseas. These were presented to one of our Tuesday volunteers, Theresa Trevino, whose son is over in Afghanistan for a year. And last but not least, on Thrilling Thursday they decorated fire trucks, which were presented to the Fire station that is here in the Texas Medical Center.

The patients didn’t let us down! They were extremely excited about the opportunity to tell these Heroes that they were special. The volunteers were taken back by the overwhelming response in participation by patients who, just moments before, were not sure if they wanted to do a craft or participate in Radio Lollipop. But when it was explained to them and their parents what we wanted to do, it was as though they got their second wind and all their problems were gone if only for a brief moment while they worked on their craft. Some parents even decorated the crafts to show their support of these every day heroes.

On behalf of all the Radio Lollipop volunteers @ Texas Children’s Hospital, we salute our every day heroes – the patients who amaze us every night we’re on the air and to the police, soldiers, fireman, doctors, nurses, etc. everywhere.

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive
So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you.

(excerpt from Mariah Carey’s “Hero”)