Our mission at the Make-A-Wish Foundation®
is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening
medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope,
strength, and joy.
How
it all began
(The
Chris Greicius story)
Our
history
Fittingly, perhaps, the first Utah
wishes involved the snow. Four-year-old Stephanie lived
in Fort Lauderdale. She had bone cancer. Her best friend
Alison moved to Park City, Utah in 1983 and told Stephanie
all about her new world of ice and mountains. Stephanie
wished to visit Utah to see Alison again and "to taste
the snow." That was her wish, the first wish ever granted
in Utah. The next year, a 
teenager
from Iowa, in the end stages of a life- threatening dystrophy,
asked, "Where is there snow in October? I love the
holidays, and I know I won't have another Christmas with
my family. We could celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday and
Christmas on Sunday, and my family could all be together
for the holidays again." His wish came true in a cabin
in the High Uintas in 1984. And, yes, there was snow. The
simple joy of these two wishes demonstrated the power of
a child's wish and deepened the conviction of Utah observers
that this wonderful opportunity should be available to Utah
children, too.
On
Hill Air Force Base in 1985, a small group of local volunteers
gathered to incorporate the Make-A-Wish Foundation®
of Utah. They began operations with a $5,000 start-up grant
from St. Benedict Hospital in Ogden and granted 5 wishes
that first year to Utah children. The first Utah Wish Child,
however, wanted to escape the December snow. She wished
for a trip to Hawaii. Debbie was fifteen years old and self-conscious
about the disabilities of her illness. She confided, "I
want to walk on the edge of the ocean, and lay on the beach
in the sand, and feel the sun on my skin, but I want to
be in a private place where no one can see me." Donations
of airline tickets from Delta and the donation of a house
on a private beach in Maui transported her out of the snowbelt
and into the Pacific sun. And Make-A-Wish Foundation®
of Utah was born.
For
more in-depth information on our chapter, see our annual
report.
For
more information on Make-A-Wish Foundation® of America,
see www.wish.org
