I apologize for the great length of time that has passed since the last blog entry. I originally wanted this to be something I touched every month to give updates and discuss feelings, but as you know, lives can get busy. But I want to talk about an event that will now be an annual event for our family and our “community.”
On August 20th, we had a “Derek’s Day At The Ballpark” at Miller Park. Last year, after Derek died and the Acts of Kindness was getting started, my family decided to share the Acts with fans at Miller Park, despite the Cardinals being in town (inside joke). We gave $1,000 and the Milwaukee Brewers matched us. We broke that in to 20-$100 gift certificates to be used at the park in which the Milwaukee Brewers’ players (Lucroy, Thornburg, Gomez, Ramirez and Scooter) gave out 5 of them to families in the parking lot and our family gave away the other 15. It was wonderful giving. This year we decided to do it again and we had a group of 475 people at the park this time. Again our family gave $1,000 and the Brewers this time gave us 12 signed baseballs and then we added 6 more. The response was amazing. We looked for volunteers from our “community” to help us with the delivery in the park, and if you look at the “Your Acts” page here, you will see all of the happy people. This is when things go right. We shared Derek’s spirit all over the park. We spread the message of Paying It Forward, and the DoIt4Derek message to people from all over the Midwest. So thank you to all that helped us with this project.
That leads us to “When Things Go Right.” Things went right that day, August 20th. People got to see the generosity of a major league ballplayer, one who Derek adored. We got to see him continuing the kind Acts to our group and then to our family. We received some amazing gifts from our friends that day and also from Jose. We can not thank everyone enough for the kindness they shared that day. Thank you. We will continue to spread Derek’s message as much as we can and as to as many as we can.
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