By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed Dec. 11, 2014
Star 94 listeners helped raise about $85,000 for Children's Healthcare at Scottish Rite Thursday during the radio station's annual 13-hour careathon.
The money will provide funding for the hospital's child life services specialists, positions that are wholly donor-funded. The specialists help guide the young patients and give them a sense on what is going to happen to them in empathetic yet age-appropriate ways. The hospital has about a dozen child life specialists on staff.
The station throughout the day gave parents and kids a chance to tell their stories on air. And even the program director Scott Lindy got personal on air, discussing how his 13-year-old daughter Mary was in a car accident earlier this year and lost her left leg below the knee, severed clean. This happened just five weeks after last year's careathon. And she ended up at Children's Healthcare.
"There's this combination of anger, fear, the unknown, despair," Lindy said on air. The Children's Healthcare staff, he said, "get it. They understand what to say, what not to say. In my case, they understood when to leave me alone." He praised the child life specialists as "the glue. They hold it together when you can't hold it together. They help the patient validate their feelings. It's okay to be mad or sad. The more they help, the more normal you feel. It takes a long time. They have a huge load on their lives. They see kids who don't make it. They watch kids who come back time and time again."
Lindy said he was a Miracle Maker donor for four years. "I had no idea I was buying into it," he said. "Mary is fantastic. She gets around great. She's a true warrior. I don't think you come out with that kind of attitude unless you come to a place like Children's when something tragic like this happens. You get past it a lot quicker."
Unfortunately the station's ability to pull funds from its listeners has waned over time. Back in the mid-2000s, when Steve & Vikki were morning hosts and the careathon ran three days, the show would pull in a whopping $1.2 million.
Cut to one day, last year, Star brought in $147,000. The $85,000 total this year is a 42% drop.
Star itself is going through ownership changes. Just a few days ago, its owner Lincoln Financial agreed to sell its radio properties to Entercom Communications.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
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