Lifespace Brightens Holidays for Local Children

For 75 children who must spend Christmas in the hospital this year, the holidays will be a little brighter thanks to residents and team members of Deerfield, a Lifespace community in Urbandale, Iowa, and team members from the Lifespace home office.

The 70 volunteers gather large stockings purchased by Deerfield, decorate them and fill them with gifts for the young patients and their siblings, says Deerfield director of life enrichment and engagement Jeanne Altman.

Resident Glenis Nunn filled three stockings this year, focusing on items children could play with in the hospital, such as coloring books and modeling clay.

“I shop all year long for it,” Nunn says. “If I see something that I think would work in a stocking, I have a drawer that I put the stuff in.”

The program, now in its fourth year, started with 30 children at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. Team members from the Lifespace home office joined this year, bringing the total to more than 70 stockings and allowing the project to expand to Broadlawns Medical Center, Altman says.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful project,” Altman says.

The generosity is sometimes surprising.

Two years ago, a staff member at Blank Children’s Hospital called Altman to ask a question.

“There was a beautiful necklace in one of the stockings,” the staff member said. “Did they mean to do this?”

Altman talked to the volunteer who donated the necklace, and she assured Altman that the gift was intentional.

“She had owned the necklace for a long time but didn’t have anybody to give it to and decided she wanted to put it in the stocking for a little girl,” Altman says.

Though it won’t fit into a stocking, one Deerfield resident donated a train set carved from wood. This year, one lucky child will receive a drone purchased by a team member from the home office.

Parents dealing with a sick child typically don’t have time to go shopping, Altman says.

“They are concentrating so much on just getting them better,” she says. “This takes the edge off the holidays.”

The hospital staff members “get teary eyed when they see the stockings,” Altman says. “They know the joy it brings to those kids.”

The joy is shared by the volunteers, Nunn says.

“It really does make us feel good,” she says.

(In the cover photo: From left to right, Judi Burch, Glenis Nunn, Deerfield Executive Director James Robinson, Marilyn Smith, Katherine Brush and Marilyn Whitmore fill stockings for 75 local children who must spend the holidays in the hospital)

(In the top inset photo: Deerfield resident Glenis Nunn made three stockings for the project)

(In the bottom inset photo: Judi Burch and Glenis Nunn prepare stockings)