A recent story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about a woman dying from breast cancer and the six children she left behind has generated emails and phone calls from hundreds of readers offering to help the family. One reader delivered Thanksgiving dinner to the family. Another volunteered to donate a car. And a fund at GiveFoward.com has raised more than $8,000 from scores of readers who want help.
Donna Lynn Woods, 45, had lived with metastatic breast cancer for more than five years without anyone to care for her except her six children, ages 8 to 25. When their school year began last August, Donna learned her cancer had spread to her spine. She died Sept. 9. The story of Donna’s final days and how the children pulled together to help her was recounted in Personal Journeys on Nov. 23.
Readers were particularly affected by the news of how Woods was laid to rest — in a cardboard box in a pauper’s grave in Palmetto.
Readers responded immediately with cash donations and offers of food, toys and clothing for the children, who are now in the care of 23-year-old sibling, Ashley Roberson. The first thing Roberson did when funds started to come in was pay a past due electric bill and shop for groceries.
“It feels so good to be able to buy my boys food,” she said as she pushed a buggy through Kroger. The family’s food stamps had expired in mid-November because Roberson had not yet received her mother’s death certificate, which is required to transfer the food stamps to her name from her mother’s.
Lawyers from Alston & Bird volunteered free legal assistance to help Ashley apply for legal guardianship of her younger brothers.
Roberson had been dreading the holidays, she said, not only because it would be the first without her mother but also because she didn’t know how she would provide for the boys.
“At least now I know they will be happy,” she said.
Read the original story, "Donna's Last Days," at www.myajc.com/s/living/personal-journeys/.
