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, Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, April 23,2003 - 7 Basic Black by Arthur Black Heroes are made, not born Heroes come in different shapes and sizes and they come to us by different delivery systems. systems. Mario Lemieux arrives on skates. Rick Hanson rolls up in a wheelchair. Roberta Bondar shows up with an astronaut astronaut helmet under her arm. Silken Lauman glides to the dock in a sleek racing shell, her hands on the oars. Then there's Mary Helen Moes. She appears in your Email inbox and wants to know what you're going to do to help her Emergency Paediatric Campaign. She's never played in the NHL and doesn't use a wheelchair. wheelchair. She's not an Olympic celeb like Silken, nor has she orbited the planet like Roberta. She's a shy suburban housewife housewife with three kids and a dog. She's a different kind of hero. Mary Helen Moes lives in Peterborough, Ontario. She grew up in the area along with five other kids. One of whom almost didn't. didn't. Twenty years ago, her brother was born with only one-quarter of a kidney and a blocked bladder. Medical technology being what it is, the boy was saved and eventually eventually grew to be a healthy adult. And Canada's tattered and threadbare health care system being what it is, Mary Helen Moes' parents were ruined in the process. It wasn't the cost of the surgeries that did them in - that was covered. No, it was the unexpected expenses. The medical expertise was far away, in Toronto. The countless trips to the city and long recuperations recuperations in hospitals meant expensive expensive stays in city hotels and pricey restaurant meals, not to mention precious time away from a working dairy operation. Mary Helen's brother needed dozens of operations. The experience experience sucked up every penny the family had saved ~ and all they could borrow. By the time Mary Helen's brother was eight years old and healthy, his parents parents had lost their dairy farm. Watching ones parents go through an ordeal like that could cmsh a person, shatter their will. Or not. Mary Helen Moes pretty much put the nightmare behind her until, watching Oprah one day, she learned of a program in the States that helped American parents of children facing extended hospital hospital stays. A bell went off in the back of her head. She remembered remembered what it was like, watching the family cows being loaded onto a truck and shipped away. She wondered if there was any comparable program in her area to help out parents of stricken kids. She made a few phone calls. There wasn't. She asked health care experts if they could use such a program. Sure could. Nobody talks about it much, but if you add up all the expenses parents or guardians face when they have to stay with ill children who are being treated at centres away from home - the meals, the accommodation, the gas, the babysitters, not to mention the lost wages - it comes to about $10,000 dollars over three months. Ronald McDonald House in Toronto helps people in need - but even they ding you twenty dollars a night. Thats 150 bucks a week. And you can't wave your health card to make it go away. So Mary Helen Moes decided to create what she called The Emergency Paediatric Campaign. She made the rounds of local businesses, businesses, trying to drum up money. She called up radio talk shows. She wangled interviews interviews with local newspapers. Understand that Mary Helen Moes had no experience at any of this. She knew from diddly about public relations, fund-raising, fund-raising, health-service liaison or any of the nuances of running a sophisticated public service. She just did it. One mother, Stacey Bondy, remembers what it was like when her newborn son came into the world with five holes in his heart. "He didn't come home for a month" she recalls. Stacey and her mother stayed at the hospital virtually day and night. "It makes you crazy" she says. Then someone told her about the EPC. The Bondys phoned to see if they qualified for help. "Mrs. Moes just came right up to the room after his surgery and handed us money" says Stacey. She also brought advice and encouragement. She knew what Stacey was going through. She'd been there. So far, the Campaign has helped more than 70 families facing the nightmare of nursing nursing a child through a critical illness in faraway hospitals. And it's all thanks to one woman who didn't want other families to go through what her family suffered. Funny thing about heroes - - they're not always larger than life. Sometimes they look just like your next door neighbour. Like Mary Helen Moes. Will Rogers once said: "we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." Put your hands together for Mary Helen Moes. Great is proud to present The Hannaford Street Silver Band and All That Jazz Saturday, April 26 „ 8:00 p.m. ■ Bowmanville High School Auditorium ti 49 Liberty St. N., Bowmanville, ON Ë