Last year, you may remember printing a short article and photo of our daughter, Katie, with her dad (Austintown Rotary) delivering toys from a drive she helped to organize to benefit Akron Children's Burn Center. She did this out of love and thanks for all the help and treatment they gave her in healing her serious fingertip injury.
This year, our family along with the Austintown Rotary decided to make it an annual tradition and once again were able to deliver a van full of toys to the Burn Center. In many years past, the members of the Rotary would participate in a $10 gift exchange between friends. We all agree that our new tradition of putting that money toward toys for children is a much better way to live out Rotary's motto, "Service Above Self." Our annual holiday get-together at MoJo's in Austintown was quite a success with many toys gathered, and a bonus 50-50 raffle that brought in $40 to buy more toys.
In an interesting side-note, our family attended the recent benefit for Austintown Officer, Ross Linert, held at IHM. Officer Linert and our daughter were both treated by the same main doctor and nurses at the Burn Center. Our family bought a lot of tickets for several raffle baskets that were filled with toys all with the hopes of winning them to take along to the hospital. Happily, we won two huge baskets! It felt good to help Officer Linert and the Burn Center at the same time.
Katie is now seven, plays the piano and her finger has healed to the point that it doesn't slow her down a bit. Attached you'll find a picture of our trip to deliver the toys this past Monday, December 22.
Photo Caption: Seven-year old Katie Rein, and her dad, Karl Rein (former Austintown Rotary President) deliver their annual toy drive donation to Nurse Julie Dittmer at Akron Children's