EASTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (WGGB) — An Easthampton business owner is doing all she can to make things a little bit brighter for the veterans living in the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home.  She’s doing it “one card at a time” and is Making A Difference.

Mary Ann Hanlon is the owner of Dance and More in Easthampton. At the suggestion of a friend, she started the Sweet on Soldiers’ program last year, as a way to say thanks to the veteran’s at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. She explains, “Customers or the general public come in and buys a heart.  The customer or public can write a thank you note to the soldier and we send it to the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke at the end of the month.”

Unfortunately, sales are a little slow this year.  Mary Ann does the Sweet on Soldiers’ program because she thinks it’s important to be a part of the community. She says, “We do the food drive in November for the community center and we want to get involved with the soldiers, because they’ve helped us as well.”

Mary Ann says based on the response last year, getting the cards with messages of thanks makes a big difference to the soldiers and adds, “We got a very nice letter from the Soldier’s Home last year and they were very grateful. I think sometimes when you’re in the Soldiers’ Home you kind of become forgotten, so we try to make their day a little brighter.”

The cards are only a dollar. That money and the cards collected at Mary Ann’s store at 56 Cottage Street in Easthampton, will be delivered to the Soldiers’ Home at the end of this month.

A year ago, Neighbors Helping Neighbors joined forces with Count Me In and South Hadley High School to collect groceries for the town’s food pantry, all to counter the school’s image in the wake of the Phoebe Prince incident. Ted McCarthy, the high school’s vice principal says, “It speaks to what they’re really invested in, when on their day off, they come in, they spend hours picking up bags, going out into the community and meeting people and collecting food and sorting food. For most kids, MLK day is a day to like, take it easy, but these guys really respond to the challenge of just helping out in the community.”

Last Saturday, 120 student volunteers, along with school administrators, teachers and townspeople, delivered more than 3 thousand empty grocery bags to homes. It’s a community wide effort.

On Monday, they went back to those homes and collected the bags, now filled with food.  Food drive coordinator Sue Brouiuette says 35 hundred bags came back, “Some people actually fill the bag with food and will staple a check to the bag. I mean the generosity inside South Hadley is just stunning to me, just stunning.”

And stunning to freshman Deanna Conti, who says, “I’m really proud, like I can’t believe all my friends are doing this with me and I’m going to keep on coming back and do this to help out everyone.”

The food collected Monday will last about two months. Last year, the first year of the food drive, over 2000 bags of groceries were collected. This year, they collected 15 hundred more.  And next year, Deanna Conti says it will be even bigger, “I think everyone wants to help put and wants to show them that we can actually make a difference.”

12 year old Andrew Robitaille is a 7th grader at Springfield’s Academy Hill School. It’s a private school for bright and gifted children. And that’s one way to describe this young man. His school work is, as you might expect, demanding. In spite of that, he finds the time every month to volunteer with Link to Libraries. He volunteers once a month and says, “I go to the warehouse, home base for Link to Libraries to label books. My mom is a distributor of the books, she presents the books to schools. And sometimes I go with her to do that. It brings me to tears sometime to see the reaction of kids when they receive the books.”

It’s Andrew’s passion for Link to Libraries that led him to sponsor a book drive at his school. He collected more than 500 books. Link to Libraries mission is to distribute those new and gently used books to elementary school libraries and non-profit organizations and to encourage young people to read. Reading is one of Andrew’s passions. He says, “It gives me the opportunity to learn in a new form, learn about the world, learn about new people, learn about cultures.”

Andrew has a lot of reasons for giving his time to help Link to Libraries. He says, “I can’t imagine a world without reading. It is my free time really, it’s what I do in my free time, when I have free time, giving back to these kids who don’t have the opportunity is really a great thing for me to do.”

Link to Libraries co-founder Susan Kaplan couldn’t agree more. She says, “His focus is really on giving back. And I think that stems from his environment, he’s been brought up that way. I see his younger siblings are coming along the same way and are being nurtured by their parents. And isn’t that what we want? We want our boys and girls to be the next generation that’s going to be giving back, being our leaders.”

Andrew says he gets as much out of volunteering for Link to Libraries as he gives, “You are brought so much joy when you see the reaction on kid’s faces when they receive the books and you have so much joy just to know what you are doing is towards a great cause.”

And giving back is what this time of year is all about.

To learn more about Link to Libraries, you can visit their website, linktolibraries.org.

Susan Kaplan says Holyoke and Springfield are the best places to start the new initiative. “The book bags are called read together and there’s two bilingual books in the bags and educational parent material supplied by the Irene and George Davis Foundation.”

Link to Libraries pays for the books with the help of some very generous donors. Donors Susan Kaplan says,  see the need just like we see the need, that our boys and girls have to be proficient readers by grade four. The book bags are aimed at building a home library and encouraging families to read to their children. Mary Curro is the Director of Early Childhood for Holyoke Public Schools. She says reading at an early age is critical and it starts at home. “Early literacy is crucial. There probably isn’t anything more critical than the development of a young child academically than having the experience where they’re read to at an early age. We’re trying to promote them as reading to children at least twenty minutes a day in whatever language the parent speaks.”

Since its inception in May 2008, Link To Libraries has donated over 45,000 new books to area non-profits and public elementary schools. If you’d like to help or learn more, go to their web site, link to libraries.org.

Each year for the last six year around Thanksgiving, Ray holds a Christmas concert for our wounded troops, the Wounded Warriors.

Ray told me, “What I like about the Wounded Warriors project, as I’ve learned over the years, is that it not only deals with the soldier, he or she respectively gets this care, this rehabilitation, but also deals with the whole family. Then outside of the family, it helps to generate the desire for a soldier to help a soldier.”

Ray was introduced to the Wounded Warrior project not long after he lost his leg in a 2001 motorcycle accident.  He says, “I’ve never served in the military, again I think it’s sort of paying it forward. At a time when I needed assistance, when I needed the belief that you know, either my life as an entertainer is over, some of the first people that inspired me were the military, were the soldiers. The gentleman who taught me to run again, so again it’s just paying it forward.”

This year’s concert for wounded warriors, the 6th annual, is November 27th at the Hu Ke Lau in Chicopee.

Ray says, “So we’re gonna have the holiday classic hits. We’re gonna have a few of the old standbys as well and you know, it’s always a chance to enjoy the music of a legend.”

A Ray of Elvis Christmas Card is Sunday, November 27th at 5p.m. at the Hu Ke Lau in Chicopee. Tickets are $20.00.

For tickets and reservations call (413) 593-5222, and Ray promises, it’s going be a great time because you really can’t go wrong with Elvis!

The Cooley Dickinson Hospital of today is much different from the small facility built on Elm Street in 1886, all thanks to the estate of Caleb Dickinson. The original hospital was built at a cost of 15 thousand dollars. It was dedicated to the care of the poor and accommodated 12 patients.
Today, CDH is looking to the next 125 years and is in the midst of an $8.2 million campaign focuses on two areas: cancer care and nursing. The hospital plans is investing $15 million in a unified cancer center where direct care, support services, radiation, chemotherapy and other aspects of cancer treatment will be consolidated. JoAnne Finck, the campaign chair says, “We are going to build our center around the patient, the patient and patient care versus having the patient sort of work their way around the hospital in terms of going from place to place.”

Mary Ellen Walsh, director of the Cancer Care Program, says the campaign will help CDH move these services into a consolidated area, something that’s much more dedicated. Patients and their families will be able to walk into the cancer care center and see all of these services in one place.

The campaign will also help Cooley Dickinson create nurse development programs that will pass the skills of its most experienced nurses on to the next generation. Joanne Finck says, “Sometimes it’s just a skill set that you can’t learn in a book, it’s something that you sort of by training, or just an innate sense and if they can relay that to younger nurses, I think that’s a win-win for everyone.”

The Building Our Future campaign runs for another year and there’s still a lot of money to be raised. To help achieve the goal, the Young at Heart chorus will perform a benefit concert at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Sunday afternoon October 30th at 3 pm. They’ll be joined by the Northamptones and the UMass Dynamics.

It’s all part of the effort to help Cooley Dickinson Hospital continue to meet the health care needs of the people of greater Northampton and beyond. As Mary Ellen Walsh says, “It’s always a privilege treating our family, friends and neighbors and that’s what we do.”

A mural now spans 50 feet of wall space outside the main office of Holyoke’s Peck Middle School. This isn’t just any art project. It’s the work of a number of teen mothers from the city’s Care Center. Holyoke Care Center art teacher Ezra Parzybok says it’s part of a longstanding relationship between the school and the center. “The philosophy of education is similar. We’re really trying to give the students a whole education, where they’re learning arts, the families can be involved.

The Care Center’s goal is to provide teen mothers the skills they need to succeed in college so they can break the cycle of poverty. Parzybok says the most important part of the project is that his students are seeing something from start to finish. “When you have a little piece of paper and you have to draw a flower and you think this little flower has to go on a huge wall and it still has to be painted and look beautiful and everybody’s going to see it, well, how am I going to get there. It’s a little nerve wracking. So if you can start and stick with it every step of the way, then you learn that sense of accomplishment from having started a long term project and seeing it through to the end.”

Seventeen-year-old Priscilla Colon of Holyoke is one of the fourteen student artists who made the mural, describes her work. “We put polka dots, we did the lines to make it look a little more alive. The colors are dark, then light, so it can stand out more.”

Eighteen-year-old Dalisa Saldana of Chicopee is another young artists, who like the others, is very proud of her work, “I didn’t know that I could do it. But I put interest in it and it came out the way it is.”

Parzybok adds, “I’ve always believed the girls are capable of something alot higher than they believe they are and if we can just get them to see it, then they’ll really go to that place where it’s a real living example of what they’re capable of.”

Parzybok calls the mural some of the best work his students have done in his nine years with the Care Center. Work he says, will be on display for generation of students and their families to see when they come to the Peck Middle School. The Holyoke Care Center students have already been asked to come back and paint more murals at the Peck School.

HOLYOKE, Massachusetts (WGGB) — Holyoke’s new transportation center on Maple Street is not only a transportation hub. It’s a technology hub too. The Thomas Gill Community Technology Center is the centerpiece. It’s designed to help create new opportunities for people in Holyoke and the neighboring communities.

George Kohout co-ordinates the center for Holyoke Community College. He calls the center the last little piece of the puzzle in order to help many folks in Holyoke move up the economic ladder a little bit, get some education, get some training and jobs that are coming on line in Holyoke as it keeps moving forward.

The Gill Technology Center offers free or low cost basic computer and software classes in English and Spanish. But the center offers even more. Kohout says, “It’s really a need of services like this, especially free services, inexpensive services. This facility here combines both day care services, transportation because of the bus station and the college classes upstairs, plus the free adult classes.”

The center is a part of Holyoke Community College and is named after Thomas Gill, the third, a former member of the college’s information technology staff. Kohout says,

“His family recognizing Tom’s kind of commitment to technology and to students, said okay, let’s use Tom’s estate to help fund this is downtown Holyoke and keep his legacy going.”

The tech center is a big part of the revitalization of downtown Holyoke. Kohout  hopes this kind of new technology training hooks up with other initiatives in Holyoke like the green computing center downtown that’s coming on line in a couple of years.

Classes are held every day, with evening classes during the week. They’ll be tweaking the hours here to meet the needs of the people who use the center.

For more information go to http://www.hcc.edu.

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (WGGB) — A cancer diagnosis at any age is devastating. When it comes during the prime of one’s life, it’s even worse. But a local man is using his cancer diagnosis to try and make a difference.

Steve Hoey says he’s always been a healthy and pretty lucky guy. He feels he’s led a very charmed life, with two beautiful daughters, a beautiful wife and his family.

But Steve Hoey’s luck changed last September when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. But that was just the beginning. Scans found a mass on Steve’s kidney. It was cancerous. So before he could deal with his prostate cancer he had part of his kidney removed. That took care of that cancer. But Steve says, “Had the surgery on the second one and Dr. Richie came up to the room. Susan and I were there, my daughters were on their way and he said, Steve, everything looks great, everything went well.”

A week later, Steve heard from his doctor again. He continues, “He says to me, we got the pathology report back. They took out five lymph nodes on the right, three were cancerous. They took four on the left, two were cancerous. There was cancer in the seminal vesicle and the tissue.”

It was stage three prostate cancer. “They can’t do anything for me and now I wrestle with dealing with the inevitable and it’s very difficult because you’re being asked on one hand to be positive by everybody, including yourself because there is hope. At the same time, you can’t ring that bell. You’ve got five years on average.”

In the time he has left, Steve Hoey wants to make a difference. He’s established the Bedford Foundation to raise money for prostate cancer research and hopefully a cure. He also wants to help others who are dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Steve says, “I want to coach the families and friends of the terminally ill how to better cope with a terminally ill person.”

He also wants to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation through his foundation. Steve is holding an open house  on Friday, September 23 from 5 to 8 at 64 Sean Louis Circle  in  West Springfield. If you make a donation of $35 you’ll receive a Bedford Foundation coffee mug.

Steve hopes, through him, people will have a better idea of what to say and how to help someone who’s terminally ill.  ”A hug and a handshake is all we need. We don’t need a heck of a lot more because the words in most cases mean things. In this case words are meaningless.”

For more information, log on to www.bedford foundation.com.

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WILBRAHAM, Mass (WGGB) – For those of us who don’t really understand Wall Street and investing, this week has been enough to make your head spin. But for 22 high school and college students, it’s been a learning experience, one that’s making a difference.

For the last two months, students from American International College, Western New England University and Springfield’s High School of Science and Technology have been meeting at The Wilbraham and Monson Academy for a daily education on economics.

SLAM was funded through a 150 thousand dollar grant from Palmer Paving and its CEO David Callahan. It required the students to complete a research project that examined and analyzed over 18 hundred junior mining companies.

Dennis Murphy, a spokesman for Palmer Paving told WGGB that Dave Callahan felt that they needed further information about junior mining opportunities, which is part of the business they’re in.

And it also answered a challenge by Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno to the business community to give young people more opportunities.

Murphy adds that it’s the Callahan family’s goal to see if these bright young men and women can return to this region, after pursuing an academic career and return to this community.

Sarah Garlick is a finance major at Western New England taking part in SLAM. She says the program  has increased her general knowledge on how to analyze certain companies and when it’s a perfect time to sell and buy your stock.

Real hands on experience in a week where Wall Street has taken a real roller coaster ride. Murphy says, “We find it particularly ironic that what’s happening on Wall Street mirrors what’s happening in this room where we have 22 of Springfield’s best and brightest learning about career opportunities.”

These students teamed up to research individual mining companies and developed a sound grading system to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each company as investment opportunities.

Franklin Webb was selected by his school, Sci Tech, to take part in SLAM. He says, “This is a great learning experience. I learned so much and I will never learn anything like I learned here ever again. So I love this idea, I love this whole program.”

The students were paid 12 dollars an hour for their work and were able to earn college credit. And their research will help Palmer Paving in its work.

Dennis Murphy calls SLAM a win/win for everyone, “To see the exuberance come from them, particularly as the program concludes, they’re all leaving here with higher hopes and higher expectations of themselves and I think ultimately that can only bring greater benefits to the region that we’re living in.”

LUDLOW, Mass. (WGGB) – A community comes together to honor a young man who gave his life for his country.

Current and former Ludlow High School students came together Thursday to take part in the Sergeant Joshua Desforges Physical Fitness Challenge. It’s part of the fundraising effort underway for a memorial and scholarship to honor the young marine and Ludlow native who was killed in action in Afghanistan in May of 2010.

Thomas Cote came up with the challenge. He’s a Vietnam war marine veteran and former state trooper who’s now an attendance officer at Ludlow High. Cote says, “It’s all about remembering Josh and all about his family who sacrificed as well.”

Josh attended Ludlow High. Many of his former classmates and current students took up the challenge that included different activities like push-ups and pull-ups. Anyone who lasted 60 minutes met the Sergeant Desforges challenge.  And they did so under the watchful eyes of a number of active marines.

The Ludlow High student council sponsored the event and according to Brian Bylicki, the response from the school and the community response has been overwhelming.

Jennifer Auger, a Ludlow High senior and student council member was one of the events organizers. She said, “It means a lot that he served and was from this town. It really brought the community together and so we’re really glad. First we were only doing the memorial in the back. But then we saw how much money we were raising, we decided to make the scholarship fund.”

In addition to the physical challenge, t-shirts are also being sold. The fundraising goal is 20 thousand dollars for this, the first of what is hoped will be an annual event.

If you’d like to contribute, you can send a check payable to the Sergeant Joshua Desforges Fund, in care of Ludlow High School, 500 Chapin St in Ludlow.

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