Air Mail — Granger kids make paper planes for ailing N.Y. boy
Effort becomes part of a global outpouring
The students have made some 8,000 paper airplanes for a 5-year-old boy fighting cancer in Centerville, N.Y., a tiny town between Buffalo and Rochester.
Come to find out, so have thousands of other people worldwide.
It's part of an effort to not only lift young Hunter Winship's spirits but also to break the Guinness World Record for collecting the largest number of paper airplanes. There currently is no such record-holder.
"My husband (Shawn) said he's sure there's over a million" planes sent from around the world, Hunter's mom, Cheryl Winship, told the Deseret Morning News. "Coming home and seeing all the boxes — to me, it makes me feel good that all these people care."
At the turn of the new year, Hunter was complaining of stomach pain, his mom said. But what doctors had been treating as constipation and pneumonia turned out to be Burkitt's lymphoma, which caused rapidly growing tumors in his abdomen. The boy was admitted to a Buffalo children's hospital with a tumor the size of a tennis ball. Two days later, it was the size of a cantaloupe.
So a family member and cancer survivor thought of a way to lift Hunter's spirits. Winship's sister in-law recalled a program in which hospitalized children put their names on lists to receive paper airplanes to cheer them.
Cheryl Winship suggested the family take the idea a step further: Seek a world record for the most paper airplanes collected.
The mother passed her idea via e-mail. Within hours, she says she received hundreds of responses.
The message apparently circulated worldwide. A video of the quest was posted on YouTube; local news media featured Hunter's story; and the NBA's Washington Wizards brought Hunter and his family to a home game, and featured him and another child during a quarter break.
Granger High kids joined the quest through Hunter's dad, in a roundabout way.
Shawn Winship makes airplane parts at Moog Inc. Moog, one of the school's business partners, suggested the students help Hunter's wish come true. And if there are any teenagers who understand a love of airplanes, they are Scott Lewis' students, who have been working well over a year to make their own plane, Excalibur, whose maiden flight is set for May.
Some students spent class time folding up their old assignments into all-American kid origami. Others, like sophomore Andrew Thomson, took the challenge home.
"I've got a lot of paper cuts," but they were worth it, smiled Thomson, who says he folded about 400 planes with whatever paper he could find.
Recent comments
Good luck Hunter. Paper airplanes are the coolest. We should get...
John | March 19, 2008 at 11:55 a.m.
