Herbie Fund History A Happy Accident

There’s no way you should even know the name Herbie Quinones.
 
After all, the youngster was born in 1978 to an obscure couple in Brooklyn, New York. They weren’t rich or famous and there was nothing special about them or their little boy.
 
Except that he was seriously ill.
 
Herbie came into the world with a rare birth defect that made it hard from him to breathe every time he swallowed. And the condition was life threatening.
 
But the operation that would help him was only performed at a few select places – including Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.
 
His family couldn’t afford the cost of the trip or the surgery, and it appeared little Herbie wouldn’t last long.
 
But when the local media ran stories about the small infant with the big need, everyone was in for a surprise. Donations started pouring in to not only bring the boy to T.O., but to cover his medical expenses and the cost of his family’s stay.
 
The Quinones clan made the journey to Toronto in February 1979, and the operation was performed successfully at the world famous medical facility on University Ave. Herbie returned home cured and grew up normally, always knowing about the generosity of strangers that saved him.
 
But while something good had been created out of something so bad, it seemed a shame to let it end there. When Paul Godfrey – now Blue Jays’ C.E.O. – heard about the story, he and his wife decided to establish a program that would aid other needy kids anywhere in the world in a similar way.
 
And Gina Godfrey refused to take no for an answer.
 
“I was Chairman of Metropolitan Toronto at the time and my wife kept prodding me to do something to save that child,” he remembers. “I tried to explain to her that that really wasn’t a municipal responsibility, and she quickly reminded me that neither was bringing a major league baseball team a municipal responsibility.”

He was aware that Dr. Robert Filler at the Hospital for Sick Children was one of the few who could perform the delicate surgery and when he agreed to do it for free, Godfrey knew he had to make it happen.

“Before we knew it, I made an appeal to the public…and they donated a lot of money and Herbie was brought to Toronto.

Eventually the press embarrassed officials in New York to cover the tab, leaving the Godfreys with a lot of donations – and no place to spend them.

“We had all this money that arrived in ones, twos and hundred-dollar bills. So again it was Gina’s idea. He said, well, why don’t we establish something called the Herbie Fund, which will help children from all over the world with life-threatening problems that could only be solved at Sick Kids Hospital?”

More than 500 kids from over 80 countries have been saved or helped since then, with about 20-25 patients coming here every year.

Among the most recent famous success stories: the operation that separated seven month-old conjoined African twins named Tinashe and Tinotenda in a marathon surgery watched by the whole world in March 2005.
 
But it’s all funded only by donations from corporate sponsors and the public. And as usual, the need is great and the funding small. Each young patient costs between $20,000-$25,000 for their special treatment.

And every dollar donated goes straight to the cause.

“If you give a dollar to the Herbie Fund, it goes directly into the medical treatment costs to help a child,” explains  the charity’s Kamla Sharma. “So our surgeons are very generous. They waive their fees and the expenses are truly for medical costs such as their hospital stay, drugs and medications that they need during their stay here at Sick Kids.”
 
 If you’d like to help  click here or call 1-800-750-8898.