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Share the Season is an annual campaign that offers one-time aid to people affected by unforeseen hardships. The people are not identified to protect their privacy.
Each month this family of three must choose: Pay the mortgage, or pay medical bills and utilities. There’s not enough money to go around.
The wife is a 32-year-old teacher with scoliosis and other unresolved health problems.
Her husband, 44, was laid off this summer after his once-profitable employer struggled to make payroll. He receives no unemployment compensation.
The couple say they already face more than $750 in unpaid medical expenses. The balance increases by $280 a month because their 5-year-old son receives therapy for a severe speech impairment. Those visits aren’t covered by the family’s health insurance.
About $400 in utility bills have also mounted.
“With Christmas coming up, I fear it will be a sad year for us all,” the wife wrote when she applied for financial help from Share the Season. “I am not the kind of parent that buys a lot for the holidays, but I don’t want my family to be without.”
She is trying to help her mother, two teenage brothers and an older sibling, who also face financial hardships due to layoffs and the death of the family’s patriarch in May.
She worries her family will lose their home soon if they continue to subsist on her take-home pay alone.
“Everything is adding up drastically, and I fear that we could lose many things or even a place to live if I cannot get some help,” she wrote to Share the Season.
Share the Season has raised $ 175,412.71 so far.
Send contributions to Share the Season at the Wichita Community Foundation, 301 N. Main, Suite 100, Wichita, KS 67202.
To donate online, go to www.sharetheseason.org. Or use your smart phone to scan the QR code with this story.
Donors will be listed in The Eagle; please note if you prefer to remain anonymous.
Among recent donors: nine Anonymous; Anonymous, in memory of Jim Linder; Robert and Rita Benoit; Harry and Marilyn Crow; Billie Drago and Cindy Flanigan; First Presbyterian Church Women; Arlen and Mary Ann Freund; Joyce Green; J. Douglas Ingrim; Jake and Gail Jernigan; Gary and Tammie Johnson; Don and Barbara Klish; Elmer and Janet Matzek; Lois Pappademos; Joan Parker; Louise Parks, in memory of Kathleen Louise Gott; Tim and Cindy Rippe; Marshall and Donna Schirer; Elvina Sexton; Keith and Georgia Stevens, in memory of Anna Laura Lewis Stevens; Jerry and Denise Tarbell, in memory of Thelma Steincamp; Mark and Mary Toben; and Lee and Nancy Woodard.
