Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103240240
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
It was the first meeting between John Kluge, a billionaire philanthropist from Charlottesville, and Craig Shergold, an 11-year-old from suburban London who received a record-breaking 33 million get-well cards after he was diagnosed in England as having an incurable, cancerous brain tumor.
University of Virginia neurosurgeons had hoped to extend Craig's life up to a year with a risky operation March 1. Instead, they were able to remove nearly all of the egg-sized tumor, which turned out to be benign.
As the front-page headlines in the London newspapers screamed in huge type, Craig was cured.
"This really is a miracle," Craig's mother, Marion, told Kluge. "And you are our guardian angel." His father, Ernie Shergold said he didn't have words to describe his thankfulness. The 51-year-old truck driver who lives in public housing gave Kluge a hard handshake.
Craig told Kluge, "I can't say anything big enough. I'd kiss you all over if I could." The balding, 76-year-old businessman stood up, leaned over, and they kissed.
Kluge gave Craig his lucky quarter - it has heads on both sides. Craig gave Kluge a framed photo of himself posing as a boxer and a hardback copy of the 1991 Guinness Book of World Records with his listing.
"The greatest present is that you are well," Kluge told Craig in a neurosurgeon's office at the UVa medical center.
Kluge wept when asked what the boy's recovery meant to him.
"I've been involved in a lot of things, but being part of a process of helping someone live . . . I thanked God," he said.
Kluge, who donated money to build a children's rehabilitation center for the hospital and paid for Craig's expenses, said he sometimes feels overwhelmed by the requests for help he gets from people with serious illnesses. "It's rather disheartening to get that kind of mail."
Marion Shergold said she thinks Craig was spared to give hope to other seriously ill children.
"I've wondered why God chose Craig for these cards," she said, referring to the campaign that drew the world's, and Kluge's, attention to Craig's plight.
"I never asked for anything," she said. "I thought, why, with all those millions of people all over the world ill, why has God chosen him? This is the answer. To prove they can have a future in this world. This is just wonderful."
Craig, wearing a brightly colored warm-up suit, told jokes about his shaved head and England's royal family and did an impression of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose get-well card put him over the million mark.
Craig tires easily. His speech is slow and his left limbs are weak. But neurosurgeon Neal Kassell said he is recovering "far better than anticipated." It will take about six months to determine if Craig's speech and coordination will return to normal.
Craig will leave the hospital next week after nearly a month of physical therapy. He's optimistic about his recovery and promised to come back in 10 years and thrash Kassell in squash.
Kluge said he hoped he would still be around to watch.
"You will," Marion Shergold said. "You'll be the umpire."
After Kluge left, Ernie Shergold said, "You know, someone should do a movie about this. It's a right good weepy, isn't it?"
The joys of this month followed "two really rough years" that began when Craig started complaining about earaches, Ernie Shergold said.
The growing tumor was compressing the brain stem to the thickness of a ribbon, Kassell said, gradually hampering the boy's speech and coordination.
Shergold said it got to the point when even the sound of turning pages hurt Craig's ears. "He was in a padded room."
After exploratory surgery in London, Craig could hardly see and the doctors told the parents to take him home and let him rest and die in peace, Marion Shergold said.
Then, his luck started to turn. Kluge called it destiny.
A doctor trying to cheer Craig up noticed the display of get-well cards in the room and mentioned that it would be something if he could "get into the book of world records," Craig's mother said.
The local media picked up on the idea and the campaign snowballed. Within a week he had 100,000 and within months he broke the old record of 16,250,659. At 33 million, campaign organizers stopped counting the cards, which are stored in warehouses in Atlanta and London, and began recycling them to hospitals. They're still coming in at 20,000 a week.
Last fall, when the count was about 22 million, Kluge said a couple of his friends asked him to send Craig a card.
He sent one, which Craig said he cherishes even more than those from celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and heads of state such as George Bush and Thatcher.
Kluge also asked Kassell, a longtime friend, to see if he could help.
Kassell said it was Kluge's intuition that gave Craig a chance. "He had a sense that, with all this media hype that goes along with 22 million cards, perhaps something could be done medically. And he was right."
by CNB