SHREVEPORT, La. — On Oct. 29 lawyers took cases pro bono, a
man installed a water heater for a disabled man who previously showered on his
back porch, and a man stopping to give a stranded motorist a jump wound up
replacing her battery. All were acts of kindness to mark what would have been
the 13th birthday of a girl killed this summer by injuries received in a
church-bus accident._ь
Maggie Lee Henson blushed on her 12th birthday last Oct. 29, when a cute waiter sang to her at an Olive Garden restaurant. |
Maggie Lee for Good Day started early for Jinny Henson, with
a TV interview about the event. It grew out of an Internet community that
formed to pray for Hinson’s daughter during her three-week struggle for life,
mostly in an induced coma, that ended when doctors declared Maggie Lee Henson
brain dead Aug. 2. _ь_ьThe day ended with a Maggie Lee for Good party at the
family’s church, First Baptist Church of Shreveport, La., which had to be moved
to a basement due to tornado warnings. Local flooding stranded people at the
church until a break in the weather after 10 p.m. _ь_ь
In between, Jinny Henson visited one school that held a
food-and-clothing drive benefiting a downtown homeless ministry, another
collecting used tennis shoes to recycle into a playground and a
childhood-education center where Maggie Lee’s seventh-grade classmates at First Baptist Church School made and
donated crafts. _ь
She passed through a drive-through snack stand benefiting
brain-injury patients in northwest Louisiana, and watched her son, Jack, who
just turned 11, as his class acted out his older sister’s favorite books for
younger students as their Maggie Lee for Good project.
_ь_ь
Those good deeds were multiplied in communities across the
United States and around the world, with nearly 18,000 people pledging to
participate through a Facebook group and web site.
After Maggie Lee’s death, an Arkansas woman who had started
a Facebook group to pray for the Hensons after the July 12 crash suggested
keeping the youngster’s memory alive by soliciting 1,300 people to perform an
act of kindness on her birthday. That goal was reached quickly, and Maggie Lee’s
mother decided to shoot for 13,000. That goal was surpassed by mid-October, and
by the time Oct. 29 rolled around the number had grown to some 17,800
individuals. _ь_ь
Many participants reported their acts of kindness on the
Maggie Lee for Good Facebook page. _ь_ь
One man got off work at 2 a.m. and a co-worker’s car battery
was dead. As he helped someone else, he said, he thought of Maggie Lee.
A woman who packs boxes each year with her daughter to send
to Samaritan’s Purse’s Operation Christmas Child this year packed an extra one
in honor of Maggie Lee. They plan to continue the practice every year. _ь_ьOne
person bought lunch for someone who recently finished college but hasn’t found
a job. _ь_ьA busy mom said she had been wanting for a long time to volunteer at a
local food pantry, but because of her hectic schedule she never tried it. She
decided to do it Oct. 29. _ь_ь
A woman in Cincinnati said she always passes the same
homeless people on the same street corners as she drives downtown, so Oct. 29
she brought them sack lunches and told them “This is from me and Maggie Lee.”
She said she made six lunches but wishes she had brought more and will continue
doing it. _ь
_ÑŒMargie Williams Sanders posted a note saying she made a
donation in Maggie Lee’s honor to a non-profit organization that helps children
with special needs. “Knowing all too well what it feels like to have a life so
tragically taken, my prayers are with you,” she consoled the family. “It will
be a year on Dec 19 that my 14-year-old daughter tragically passed from a freak
accident. In March she would have been 15, and it was one of the most difficult
days. We don’t understand why these things happen, but I always say God has a
plan. Maggie Lee, along with my daughter, is living it up in heaven right now.
Happy Birthday, Maggie Lee!” _ÑŒ_ÑŒ
Penny Jetton Golden was driving her son to school and
talking about his plans to tell his class about the day and make sure everyone
did something nice for someone else. As she pulled up to the drive-through at
Starbucks, the cashier told her, “The car in front of you paid for yours. It’s
Maggie Lee’s birthday.” The cashier went on to explain that it had been a chain
reaction all morning — with customers paying for the orders of the people
behind them. _ь_ь
Trey Randal honored Maggie Lee by donating blood for his
first time ever. “They even signed me up to be a regular donor every 60 days,
which is something I never would have decided to do on my own,” he said. _ÑŒ_ÑŒ
Lorri Hester Williams and Meredith Bleasdell helped a friend
decorate a huge space for an expected 100 guests for her husband’s 40th
birthday party. “It doesn’t sound like much, but our friend has the flu,
bronchitis and a kidney infection and honestly didn’t know how she and her Mom
were going to get everything done,” she said. “We had to skip our Bible study
to do this, but we know that God was honored on this day as we remember Maggie
Lee and all that she did good for others.”
_ь_ьJinny Henson said the stories amazed her family and made
them grateful. “People have begun terming their good deeds, ‘Maggie Lee,’ as
in, I did my ‘Maggie Lee,’ as a description of a good deed done in Christ’s
love,” she said. _ÑŒ_ÑŒ
Maggie Lee’s father, John Henson, an associate pastor at
First Baptist Church in Shreveport, used part of
the day to travel to Tyler, Texas, to take a bright pink flower arrangement to
her grave, along with some flowers for his mother’s grave as well.
_ÑŒ_ÑŒ“Today is a great day to let our good deeds show; to do
things that make this world a better place; to help answer the prayer of Jesus
for the Kingdom to come in this world as it is in Heaven,” he wrote Oct. 29 on
his blog. “This is
our way of joining up with God to bring good out of a horrible situation.”
“I cannot begin to imagine why the accident
happened and why Maggie Lee died and I certainly don’t believe God caused it,”
he wrote. “What I do know and can see is how God has been at work to bring good
out of it. 17,800 people doing good things is great evidence of that.”