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Community Corner

Making Wishes Come True One Child at a Time

The Make A Wish Foundation of Metro New York grants wishes to local children with life-threatening illnesses every day.

For nearly 30 years the of Metro New York has been granting wishes to kids with life-threatening illness from the five boroughs and Nassau County, as well as granting “wish assists” to children from all over the world. Their mission is simple: to grant a child the one thing in life that he or she wants more than anything in the world.

How hard can that be, right? After all they are just children. It sounds simple enough. Well, maybe not.

According to President and CEO of Make A Wish Metro New York Patricia Clemency, “you can never read into the mind of a child and tell what their imagination holds.”

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For some kids that wish can be as simple as a toy or as complex as planning a family trip to Disney or working behind the scenes at a Broadway play or movie.

Clemency has been helping to grant all kinds of wishes since the Metro New York chapter launched in 1983. Over the past 23 years she and her team of dedicated and highly-trained volunteers and staff have granted over 8,500 wishes.

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“Our job is to create the magic and listen for the wish,” Clemency said. “Make a Wish in so many magical ways comes together and makes sure there is always a way and opportunity to grant the next childs’ wish.”

For wish kids like eight-year-old Sean Nidermaier of New Hyde Park, Clemency and her team brings joy amidst so much pain and also inspires them to help other kids in similar situations.

Last year Sean, whose illness was requested to be left undisclosed, was granted his wish to go to Disney. After returning from the trip, Sean was determined to raise funds to help other kids with illnesses. On Super Bowl Sunday, he along with his entire family joined over 5,000 people in Long Beach as they plunged into the freezing ocean as part of the decade old to raise funds for the Make A Wish Foundation.

“I wanted to jump into the water to help other kids,’ Sean said. This year the Nidermaier family raised over $1,300 towards the foundation.

Other wish kids like 13-year-old Gillian Cohen from Merrik Avenue Middle School also do their part to give back to the foundation that once gave them so much hope. Cohen was diagnosed with a very rare liver disease when she was four-years-old.

Although it has been years since her liver transplant and she is now much better, Gillian has not forgotten how meaningful the foundation was to her and her family in their time of need. She is now playing an active role as a Good Will Ambassador helping to raise funds at her school on behalf of Make A Wish.

“The greatest gift of Make A Wish is that people from all walks of life come together with the unity and belief that this is the most important work we can do for kids,” Clemency said.

According to Clemency, who said she has had to build up a little bit of an emotional armor when doing her job, the Metro New York chapter has granted 531 wishes to local kids and has brought 262 children from around the world to New York as “wish assists” in 2010.

 “When we grant a wish to a child and you see their excitement and expression, you know for that moment in time, that wish allows them to imagine a world beyond doctors and hospitals and treatments and illness," Clemency said. "It allows them to share as a family in the one thing that matters the most. Hopefully it is special and helps heal the spirit so that child can go on and have other experiences in life."

A parent once said to me, “when your child gets diagnosed with cancer…the whole family has cancer,” granting them this wish, brings joy to the entire family, Clemency added.

Since granting its first wish in 1983 to a young boy who wished to meet Catherine Bach, also known as Daisy Duke from the Dukes of Hazards, and only granting two wishes for that entire year, Make A Wish Metro New York now grants one wish every 11 hours.

Clemency thanks the many local business and groups such as for bringing awareness and support to the foundation. It is the first school to set up an internship program with The Make A Wish Foundation. 

According to Clemency, last year the Metro New York chapter, which is the biggest in New York consisting of nearly 10 million people, raised $9.5 million; 78 cents of every dollar raised goes directly to wish granting.

“I have the best job in the world,” Clemency said. “The illness is sad and depressing, but this is some of the most joyful work you will ever see. We get to deal with the joy of the wish experience.”

Although great work has been done over the past 30 years by the Make A Wish Foundation, Clemency said there are about 800 newly diagnosed kids every year. So every year the foundation opens its doors to those families.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Clemency said. “It’s about everyone doing what they can no matter what. All of us have the power to make a wish.”

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