Teddy Atlas Thanksgiving Give-Back ~
It was all kind of serendipitous. Stuck in traffic last Tuesday afternoon driving to my parents' house in West Brighton, my 12-year-old daughter, Charista, noticed the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation building and asked me who he was.
It's a charitable organization named after a physician who provided free medical care to patients who otherwise couldn't afford to pay, I explained. It was started by his son, Teddy Atlas, an ESPN boxing commentator, who also trained Mike Tyson and two-time heavyweight champ, Michael Moorer.
"They didn't have to pay?!" Asked my 9-year-old twins, Tatiana and Angelica.
Not only were did they not have to pay for operations but Dr. Atlas made house calls to poor people until he was 80 years old, and founded two hospitals on Staten Island. Interestingly, one of them was Doctors' Hospital, where I myself had worked evenings and weekends throughout high school and college to defray my tuition.
My kids were amazed when I mentioned Teddy was an NBC commentator for the Olympics in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008, and that he lived on Staten Island. Like me, he also attended Curtis High School.
They loved that his philanthropy focused mainly on helping children and that he gets celebrities like Patrick Ewing, Tony Danza and Phil Simms to help Staten Islanders in need.
That night my children Googled the Teddy Atlas Foundation and learned they had bought a blood oxygenation machine for a little girl with a congenital heart malformation. They came to her rescue when nobody else would.
How nice it was, my daughters said, that money raised paid for central air for a kid who had a rare disease and whose skin blistered when temperatures rose. Then they bought health insurance for another kid with lymphoma whose family couldn't afford the cancer treatments, also arranging for them to meet NY Yankees stars Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
Charista mentioned she read in the Staten Island Advance that the Atlas Foundation held a fundraising dinner with lots of famous people each year at the Hilton. As a matter of fact, one of the reservation coupons for this year's dinner, held last week, was published on the same page recently as one of my columns.
Charista wanted to help. She immediately put her thumbs to work and began texting her closest friends, who she was confident would love to join her. She was right.
Certainly, 12- and 13-year-old eighth graders at St. Joseph Hill Academy and a couple of fourth graders at PS 29 didn't have the disposable income that celebrities, like the cast of the Sopranos, Charles Oakley, and John Starks (my favorite Knick in my dental school days, by the way) had. They didn't have income at all.
What they did have, however, were their willingness to help, their personal savings from allowances and babysitting, and the generosity to give it all away to those less fortunate.
All the girls agreed that helping children in need was the right thing to do so close to Thanksgiving, a holiday infamous for overabundance and overeating. To be so lucky was unsettling when so many had lost so much from Hurricane Sandy.
I had never been prouder of my kids and their friends, especially when they'd already done what the could the past 3 weeks: Made food for the disaster relief, helped with the clean-up, donated blankets and towels, prayed. They knew their parents donated money. They wanted to do more.
That night Charista's iPhone lit up for the next few hours with texts. Schedules were coordinated, ideas were brainstormed. The group was confirmed: Charista, Tatiana, and Angelica Mroczek, Ashley Iraci, Victoria Crispi, Raquel Pillarella, Amanda Aubry, and Angela Candrilli. Project Teddy Atlas Thanksgiving Give-Back was born.
They researched that the Atlas Foundation's food pantry fed kids year-round, distributing turkey dinners at Thanksgiving and toys at Christmas to families who couldn't afford them. The girls wanted help in the replenishment, even if just a little.
24 hours later on Thanksgiving Eve, we all arrived at foundation headquarters on Cary Avenue, Staten Island. Teddy Atlas himself welcomed us.
Eight young ladies had pooled all their money from personal savings and donated $500 to help other children less fortunate. Additionally, they donated canned goods, diapers, pasta, and cleaning supplies to help stock the food pantry.
Teddy thanked each girl individually and shared stories of the good their donation will do. It was because of caring individuals like them, he said, that the Atlas Foundation was able to buy a wheelchair and build a ramp for a little girl with Cerebral Palsy. She was non-verbal but had managed to thank him personally with a donation of a loaf of bread for the food pantry.
It's because of their generosity, Teddy explained, that a boy with cancer, who was so poor he slept on a mattress on a floor, returned home from chemotherapy one day to see his bedroom furnished with furniture, a television, and a wall mural of "Pirates of the Caribbean," his favorite.
When Teddy asked if anyone had gone to see Justin Bieber in concert the week before, half the girls raised their hands. His foundation enabled two little girls to attend. They were orphans and suffering from having witnessed the murder of their mother and suicide of their father. The concert was a reprieve for them, even for a few hours.
In an age of constant information bombardment, distractions and shorter attention spans, Teddy captivated the girls with his stories of all the good their donation would do to improve the lives of underprivileged children. From the looks on the girls' faces he made a wonderful impression on them.
He showed them the food pantry and they spent some time organizing the shelves. Soon the girls bid adieu to their new hero but said hello to their invigorated resolve to continue to look outside of themselves and find ways to help others.
As we all hugged our goodbyes that afternoon to start cooking Thanksgiving feasts for our families, I overheard the girls making plans to volunteer. One said she wanted to read books to orphans. Another wanted to serve food in soup kitchens. Still another said would hold diaper and baby formula drives.
And just like that, a Thanksgiving tradition was born.
After all, as I always tell my kids: To whom much is given, much is expected.
