RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - He shows up at hospitals with comfort food and corny jokes, an emissary of empathy for people likely experiencing the worst moments of their lives.
Roger Reynolds shares not only goodwill with the parents of children who are seriously ill or dying. He also shares an intimate understanding of what they are going through. He knows what they know. He has been there.
His daughter, Charlotte Jennie, who was also known as CJ, had brain cancer. There were delicate surgeries, exhausting treatments and numerous hospital stays. She was only 4 years old when she died in January 2010.
In their grief, Roger and Rachel Reynolds launched CJ’s Thumbs Up Foundation as a way to honor their daughter’s memory and to help others going through similar struggles and, in what Roger describes as “kind of a selfish way,” to bolster themselves when they needed it most.
“Otherwise, I’m just curled up on the floor in a fetal position and that’s not good for anybody,” he said.
That they have kept the foundation going for a decade is a testament to them and the important work they do. At UVA Children’s Hospital, one of the two hospitals where Roger delivers food and cheer once a week, child-life assistant Patricia Carrubba says, “He has totally made a difference in so many lives, one sandwich at a time.”
Roger is a musician by training and trade. He performs, teaches and has worked as a radio deejay, though his primary job now is director of programs for the foundation, of which he is often the face and personality. He also describes himself as a “part-time, stay-at-home dad” for their 13-year-old, Prudense. Rachel is program manager at Cameron K. Gallagher Mental Health Resource Center.
“This is my one little thing that I do,” he said. “All of the nuts and bolts of the nonprofit and the budget and all that stuff, that’s our amazingly wonderful board. The board is not afraid to say ‘no’ to me. I’ve had some really bad ideas, and they saw that.
“My wife is the genius behind everything. … I’m the crazy idea guy; she’s the smart one. But it works. It’s a hardcore team effort.”
The inspiration to start the foundation came from the Ashland couple’s experience, not only in the way they were supported by friends and relatives but from their observations that not every family seemed to enjoy that kind of community embrace. They also saw children spending much of their days alone in the hospital, which is why the original idea was to volunteer at hospitals and sit at kids’ bedsides, read them stories and just keep them company.
However, he said the “red tape” they would need to unravel to perform that sort of service was too complicated.
So, they turned to financial assistance for families under the duress of long-term hospital stays with their children - rent, utility bills, that sort of thing - and eventually to meals, which is something that is not always considered. It made perfect sense to Reynolds, who had eaten his share of odd-hours, soda-and-chips meals from vending machines when he didn’t want to leave his daughter’s bedside.
“We had to find our niche, and we did,” he said. “It’s like music therapy, but meal therapy.”
They started at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, where CJ primarily had undergone treatment. They raised funds, started connecting with generous restaurateurs and went to work, providing a buffet meal one day a week for families. A few years ago, they added UVA Children’s Hospital. Besides food, they distribute blankets, for chilly nights sitting next to hospital beds, and solace.
Carrubba, a longtime hospital educator, became connected to Reynolds and the foundation after being assigned to the child-life department at UVA. One of her new duties, she discovered, involved “helping with lunch.”
Her reply?
“Excuse me?”
It didn’t sound like the sort of work she was accustomed to and figured she had been saddled with a dreadful chore. The experience turned out to be something quite different than she imagined.
“I went into this conference room, and Roger shows up, and he’s just his jolly self, and he’s got this food,” Carrubba recalled. “Roger’s telling jokes, and one by one people are getting food.”
As they picked up their food, Carrubba recalled, they thanked Reynolds profusely and made comments like, “You have no idea, we haven’t eaten for two days!”
“By the end of the first hour, I thought, ‘My God, this is such a meaningful thing,’ ” Carrubba said. “It was so moving to hear these people tell me, ‘My child is dying,’ or ‘My little girl was in a terrible accident, she’s on life-support.’ One story after another. They don’t want to leave the hospital, and they don’t really want to leave the bedside.”
And here was Reynolds in the middle of it, bringing a little comfort in the form of a sandwich or slice of pizza, a smile, a pat on the arm.
Said Carrubba, “I couldn’t wait for the next week.”
Michelle Veach came to be acquainted with Reynolds and the foundation in Charlottesville and Richmond, as her son, Adam, who was born prematurely at 23 weeks, spent most of his short life in the hospital. Veach was driving back and forth between her home in Winchester and the hospital in Charlottesville and later the one in Richmond, skipping meals and generally not taking particularly good care of herself as she juggled her hospital visits with her children at home.
She heard about Reynolds from the hospital staff and showed up for lunch one day.
“I think he made a joke and gave me a little blanket,” Veach said. “He would introduce us to other parents. He made me realize you’re not really alone in this.”
When Adam was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Richmond, “I found Roger there, too.”
Adam died at age 2½ in June 2017 (his twin, Benjamin, survived and is doing well), but she never forgot what Reynolds and the foundation did for her family - she still has the blankets Reynolds gave her and the hats for her kids (“I’m almost going to cry telling you,” she said), not to mention the warm memories of how he made sure her kids had pizza for the long ride home when they came for hospital visits. The foundation paid the family’s electric bill once and covered her first month’s rent when she had to move temporarily to Richmond.
“I will forever be indebted,” said Veach, who now lives outside Little Rock, Ark. “He just really has a powerful impact, He lost his daughter, and he’s done amazing things. How did he find the strength do that?”
Besides food, Reynolds and the foundation distribute blankets for chilly nights sitting next to hospital beds, directs parents to resources that might help them and generally offers solace at a difficult time.
The pandemic has created additional challenges, particularly when he couldn’t enter the hospitals for a while and had to drop off the food with child-life specialists at the hospital. He missed the interaction with families. Also, the coronavirus has rendered buffets a thing of the past, at least for now, so Reynolds has to arrange to deliver individually wrapped meals, which he’s managed to do because of the kindness of his supporting restaurants.
He even stepped up when other nonprofits had to shut down and provided meals on additional days at the hospitals. The foundation’s budget eventually ran low, and they had to back off, but it’s maintained its regular schedule. The foundation has served more than 11,000 meals for the year.
“Our supporters have been super generous,” he said. “As long as everybody keeps helping us out, we’re doing OK, but we definitely want to do more in the future.”
Longtime supporter Cris Leonard suggested Reynolds and the foundation as a subject for the “Making a Difference” series, marveling at the level of care and compassion, impressed by the “drive that leads him to influence so much good to benefit others.”
As Michelle Veach put it, “The world needs more Rogers.”
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