🚀 go-pugleaf

From Associated Press, as it appeared in the Chicago _Tribune_ on Thursday,
December 14, 1988, under the headline "Tale of ill boy inspires flood of
misguided mail":



SPRING HILL, Florida (AP) -- Calls come in from across the country asking
about the postcard campaign for the Spring Hill boy with cancer.

The problem is that he doesn't exist, and those who know the details of the
misguided effort are pleading for an end to the postcard frenzy.

Bags of postcards keep coming, and the holiday season has stirred even more
interest.

People hear that a boy named David would like to be listed in the Guinness
Book of World Records for receiving the most postcards, or Christmas cards,
depending on the story.

A Spring Hill post office box, or sometimes a West Palm Beach number, is
given as a mailing address.

The real story is that Mario Morby of Steely, England, has cancer, but it is
in remission and his name is already listed in the 1989 Guinness Book for
having the world's largest collection of postcards.

Frances Keefe, founder of Florida Child's Wish Come True organization in
Spring Hill, decided this summer to help with his effort.

Aline Morin, a member of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign
Wars' Post 3588 in Lake Worth, joined the effort in August and offered her
West Palm Beach address as another possibility.

She says the Morbys asked that the name David be used to protect their son, a
report the Morbys deny.

"We never asked anybody to use that name," Mario's father, whose name is
David, said from his home this week.  "We don't even know how that got
started."

But the result has been thousands of pieces of mail addressed to "David" each
day.

Joseph Cerbone, mail supervisor in Spring Hill, said Wednesday that about
50,000 pieces of mail arrive each day for David in the Gulf Coast community
about 50 miles north of Tampa.

Morin, across the state in West Palm Beach, says she has received about
165,000 postcards, and almost 5,000 more arrive each day.

Keefe, who runs the nonprofit organization out of her home, is running out of
space.

In July, the Morbys directed the U. S. Postal Service to deliver the
postcards to an auction house in Nottingham, England, where the mail is sold
every two months.  Stamp collectors and others buy the postcards.

Money from those sales is being donated to the Birmingham Children's Hospital
in England, where Mario received chemotherapy.  The auctions have raised
about $4,000.

=======================
Note: Aline Morin said that the Morbys came up with the name "David" but
the Morbys deny it.  In a letter to Portal Communications, Frances Keefe
said that the name was her idea.

David_W_Tamkin@cup.portal.com  ...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!david_w_tamkin
Portal's management and other customers do not speak for me, nor I for them.