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Many of us have thousands of reasons to be thankful on this Thanksgiving day. All of us have at least one reason.
With our economy going down the toilet and our jobs outlook not getting any better, among a host of other bad news for many of us, I bring to you American hero's for acts that they have committed here at home.
WATERTOWN, Tenn. - A 10-year-old girl from Wilson County has turned $20 into enough money to feed two families.
Brittany Eiserman is making this Thanksgiving special for a lot of people.
There's not much one can buy for $20 these days, but Brittany found a way to do so.
Instead of keeping the money for herself, she decided to help others in need.
Brittany Eiserman and her family delivered bags of groceries to two families in Watertown Wednesday morning.
"Donna, we wanted your family to have a good Thanksgiving like ours," she said as she greeted Donna Holder Wednesday morning.
"This is an answer to a prayer because we didn't know if we were going to have Thanksgiving," Holder said. "They called and told us what they were going to do so it really is a wonderful thing."
The child participated in a local radio contest where she was given $20 to do something special for others.
She decided to use the money to make chocolate-covered pretzels. She sold them in the community and raised $150 to buy Thanksgiving dinner for families.
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Before dying of leukemia last week, 11-year-old Brenden Foster had put together his very own "Bucket List." Item No. 1 on the boy's things-to-do-before-I-die list?
Feed the homeless.
Brenden, as it turned out, was too sick to handle that one on his own. Diagnosed with blood cancer in August 2005, he suffered a relapse last December. By this summer, doctors told the fifth-grader he hadn't long to live.
Then, earlier this month, KOMO-TV in Seattle aired a report about the boy's wish list. Within days the word had spread all the way down the Pacific Coast, and the response was startling.
In Los Angeles, the Union Rescue Mission, a nonprofit shelter, served 2,500 meals this month to the homeless in Brenden's honor. When it distributed sack lunches to the needy, two words were written on the front of each pouch: "Love Brenden."
In Seattle, near the suburb of Bothell, where the slight, curly-haired boy lived, volunteers prepared hundreds of sandwiches to give away — ham and cheese, Brenden's favorite, and peanut butter and jelly. (The boy wanted to make sure vegetarian homeless people had something to eat.)
By Thanksgiving, a Seattle campaign collected more than 60,000 pounds of donated food to be distributed among the state's food banks for the holiday. "I don't have much myself," read one note, attached to a donation, "but your wish touched me and I'm going to do what I can."
Says Camille Wells, a spokeswoman with the nonprofit Food Lifeline: "I can't say we would have gotten the same response from people if it wasn't for his request."
Brenden died Friday at home. He told his family he wasn't afraid of death, just sad that he didn't have more time on Earth to do more, says Patricia McMorrow, his grandmother. The boy's other wishes: To save honeybees and clean up Seattle's Puget Sound.
