Raymond Cervantes
The call to a Wish with Wings came in mid-May from a social worker at Cook Children’s Medical Center: a 4-year-old patient named Eli was newly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and likely had a month to live.
“She was going home in hospice,” says Clarissa Hernandez, program manager for a Wish with Wings, a Fort Worth nonprofit that grants wishes for Texas children with life-threatening conditions. The organization didn’t waste time putting together this wish — this one was an emergency. “We knew we had to move quickly.”
Eli wanted a snowy Christmas in May — in Texas — with Disney characters on hand. On May 20, about two weeks after the call from Cook, Eli and her family walked outside their North Richland Hills home in midmorning to find an improbable scene: snow falling on a lawn already covered by snow.
Their home was lit brightly with Christmas lights. There was the big polar bear, lit tree, and big presents. And for the next hour, a parade of hundreds of police officers and firefighters from a dozen agencies, MedStar medics, and other well-wishers. Mickey and Minnie Mouse, too. Elves gathered a pile of presents from people in the parade for Eli to open later. The Fort Worth Police helicopter hovered overhead. A real reindeer wandered through. And, finally, Santa drove through in the bed of a pickup.
It’s one of the more unusual wishes a Wish with Wings has pulled off. “It’s my first parade in my six years here,” says Hernandez, in charge of pulling the pieces together. Mood swings are an increasing symptom of Eli’s cancer as it advances, heightening the urgency of executing her wish. “We wanted to do it sooner rather than later, and that’s what her medical team advised.”
Rachel DeLira
How It Came Off
Hernandez’s first call went fittingly to Emergency Ice, the first time a Wish with Wings had contacted the firm for help. “I just researched ice and snow,” Hernandez says. Emergency Ice donated 4,000 pounds of ice — “there were pallets of ice,” Judy Youngs, a Wish with Wings’ CEO, says — and a crew and machine. Early in the morning May 20, the crew converted the ice to snow and blew it onto Eli’s front lawn and up into the air to simulate snow fall.
Youngs then contacted Christmas by Zenith, a longtime Wish with Wings benefactor. Allan Rodger, the owner, sent a crew, gratis, to Eli’s home the night before the parade to light the roof. The firm also threw in the polar bear, tree, and presents. “They have always been there for us,” Youngs says.
Next, a Wish with Wings rented the Mickey and Minnie costumes to provide the characters, and North Richland Hills police officers played the roles. The volunteer-based Once Upon a Cause, formerly Princesses With a Purpose, sent princesses to the parade, including Belle, Eli’s favorite. Brazos Carriage, which runs carriage services in Fort Worth’s Sundance Square, brought a carriage for the princesses to ride in the parade for a small fee. And after the parade, Eli and her family got to ride in it.
The Fort Worth and North Richland Hills police recruited 10 other agencies and MedStar to join the parade. Hundreds of police and firefighters — in police and fire vehicles and on motorcycles, bike, and horseback — rode. Parade participants included the Fort Worth Police chief Ed Kraus, incognito in a baseball cap and driving an unmarked Dodge Charger with a “Merry Christmas, Eli” poster and Christmas tree image taped on it. One fire engine blared Christmas music from its PA. North Richland Hills authorities managed the parade route.
Youngs estimated at least 500 vehicles were in the parade, including well-wishers besides public safety who joined the route. “When we let it out we were having this parade, people just showed up,” Hernandez says. Abby’s Warriors, formed a few years ago in North Texas by the mother of a girl who eventually died of the same kind of cancer Eli has, participated in the parade.
Playing a connection, Hernandez contacted B3 Entertainment, a Dallas renter of live reindeer. B3 dispatched a handler and reindeer — shedding because it was May — to join the parade route at no charge. “He has tons of animals; he was telling me about a monkey he has,” Hernandez says.
And then there was Santa, who signed up immediately. “The only thing we asked people not to do was bring Santa,” Hernandez says. “We had Santa. We wanted one Santa.”
A Wish with Wings had little expense to bear, which helps it grant as many wishes to significant depth as possible, Youngs says. “We can’t grant the number of wishes we grant if we had to pay full retail,” Youngs says.
COVID-19’s dented this year’s fundraising, but it’s also dramatically diminished the numbers of wishes the nonprofit can grant this year. That’s because Disney World wishes — the majority of wishes children ask for and that a Wish with Wings grants — have been shut down by the temporary closure of Give Kids the World Village in Orlando, Florida, a nonprofit partner resort where “wish families” stay.
A Wish with Wings has continued with other popular wishes such as shopping sprees. This fall, it’s teaming with Beyond Backyards to build a backyard playground for a 4-year-old boy, Lincoln, diagnosed with cancer as an infant, but now cancer-free. “They’re helping us tremendously,” Hernandez said of Beyond Backyards.
Dream Street Tours: If You Go
Fort Worth Magazine’s Dream Street — three luxury homes under construction on a cul-de-sac in Southlake’s Oxford Place — will be open for a month of tours in October to benefit a Wish with Wings, our official charity.
When: Oct. 3 – 25, 2020, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only. Thursdays – Saturdays 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Sundays: 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Where: 1100 High Court, 1104 High Court, 1105 High Court, Southlake. Take Kimball Avenue north from Texas 114 to East Highland Street; go west on East Highland to High Court.
Buy tickets: $20, dream.fwtx.com
Buy the homes: 1100 High Court has sold, but 1104 High Court and 1105 High Court are for sale. Listings: compass.com
