Finding a Security Blanket

Most children find comfort in a favorite pacifier, doll or blanket. I really liked my pacifier. Other kids drag around a blanket like Linus in the Charlie the Brown comic strip. One woman, Karen Loucks, realized some children need something to help comfort them.

On Christmas Eve, 1995, she read an article titled “Joy to the World” that appeared in Parade Magazine. It was written by Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalist, Eddie Adams. Part of the article featured a petite, downy haired child named Laura:

“Laura has unusual compassion for others,” Charlotte Barry-Williams of Oceanside, California, says of her daughter, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 1993. “I guess part of the reason is that she has experienced so much pain herself.”

A special “blankie” has helped Laura, 3, get through more than two years of intensive chemotherapy. She takes it to the hospital with her when she goes for treatment. When she was first diagnosed, 97 percent of her bone marrow contained cancerous cells. Although chemotherapy has helped eradicate the cancer, she has had to endure nausea, high fevers and the loss of her hair. An allergic reaction at one point caused her to lose vital signs.

“She doesn’t understand what cancer means,” her mother says. “She’s a very joyous and happy person, very curious.” Her mother hopes Laura can start preschool next spring.

After reading the article, Karen Loucks decided to provide homemade security blankets to Denver's Rocky Mountain Children's Cancer Center, and Project Linus was born. Currently there are 309 chapters in the United States and they have collected and distributed over 5 million blankets. The local Klamath Falls Chapter donated 1,041 blankets in 2013 and since they became a chapter, a total of 8,970 blankets.

Today’s gift was a donation to Klamath Falls Project Linus for materials to make blankets. The children who desperately need a security blanket will have one thanks to the wonderful volunteers who make them with love.

In Giving,

Robin