From The Jewish Journal

Read what Laura Stampler of the Jewish Journal has to say about us:

While many Angeleno families will be celebrating Father’s Day with brunches, beach trips and Sunday matinees, an unlucky few will be sitting at the bedside of a critically ill child. Although caring for sick children is difficult for any family, the emotional and economic burden can be particularly hard on single fathers.

This Father’s Day, the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation is collecting assistance for single-father families of children with life-threatening illnesses through its Dedications 2 Dads initiative. The foundation will be accepting anything that can help a single father in need, from money to a bag of groceries.

When the family of a critically ill child is hit with a financial crisis and lacks all other resources, social workers at affiliated hospitals send urgent requests to the foundation. This money covers foreclosures, medications or even a wig for a self-conscious teenager who is returning to school after chemotherapy. According to the foundation, $10 pays for a trip to the hospital; $150 brings a grandparent home to assist the father or care for other, perhaps neglected, siblings. This funding also allows a father to stay at home, free from financial concerns, at a time when his child needs him most.

Valerie Sobel founded the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation after her teenage son died suddenly and unexpectedly of a malignant brain tumor. Valerie’s husband, unable to live past the unveiling of his son’s tombstone, fatally shot himself exactly one year after his son’s death.

In the wake of her grief, Sobel became an advocate for parents of critically ill children who lack monetary resources. Her foundation focuses particularly on single-parent households in which a caretaker often must chose between work and being physically present at the bedside of a sick child.

“When a parent loses a beloved child, something inside changes,” Sobel said. “When our 19-year-old Andre died, in time I began to understand that to have had the love of my husband and financial resources was good fortune in the middle of our tragedy, and that not all families are this fortunate.”

Although donations do not entirely cure the pain, Sobel believes that charity is necessary because it enables a parent to worry only about what is important: physically being there for a suffering child’s journey.

Sobel, herself, is not unaccustomed to the generosity of strangers. Three days following her birth in Hungary in 1941, Sobel was taken in by a non-Jewish family and stayed in numerous safe houses after her father was taken to a Nazi labor camp. Sobel later fled communist Hungary with her parents in 1956.

“Mitzvot come full circle in the darkest circles of our lives,” Sobel said. “Not every instance of mitzvot is what we do, but many are what has been done for us, and that encourages us to pass it forward. Everything is connected.”

See the article on their website (toward the bottom)