The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: megimoo on September 30, 2011, 08:26:31 PM
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Names on beams cheer Children's patients
With all the energy one would expect of a healthy boy his age, Julian Blackwell, 4, scurried across his room at Seattle Children's hospital Thursday, oblivious to the veritable Christmas-tree-on-wheels of monitors, wires, tubes and other devices to which he is tethered.
The Auburn youngster, being treated for a serious blood disorder, sprinted to the window to make sure his visitor got a good look at the construction project outside.....Specifically, the boy pointed out words painted on a steel beam some four floors above the ground....."It's not on the top row, it's one lower, and then it's the first one in yellow," he said.
And sure enough, there on a reddish-brown beam was a message an ironworker spray-painted only a few days ago. Its big bold letters said simply, "HI JULIAN."....A couple of rooms away, Zac Graling, a 16-year-old being treated for leukemia, looked out at another beam bearing the message, "HI ZAC."
"It's fun to think they put up your name on a building and it will be there forever," said Graling, of Des Moines, who, like Julian, hopes to go home next week after a lengthy hospital stay.......And it's not just Julian and Zac who are getting personalized greetings from the seven-story tower taking shape as the initial phase of the hospital's long-planned, long-debated expansion......The new building's skeleton is alive with greetings to Kitty, Colby, Kyle and Istvan. To Violet, Seth, Josh and Austin. To Rachel, Adam, Gillie-Jane and Christofer.
"Each day we do another one — at least one," said Tim Hettich, a superintendent with subcontractor The Erection Co., made up of Ironworkers Local 86.......ironworkers painted a beam in tribute to a teenager who had died at the hospital, and whose father was a friend of the construction worker.
After that, other workers who knew of children being treated at the hospital painted those names on the beams. No long, flowery messages. Just "hi" and the patient's first name.....And then, said Hettich, "it went viral." .......Young patients who wanted their names on the beams put signs in their windows for the workmen to see, and checked back daily to see which names went up next, with the count now at some 50 names.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016361664_names30m.html
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Aw... very cool of the crew to do that.