Seattle’s Jean Renny donated $20K to help low-income children go back-to-school shopping. You’ll never guess what one of these kids wanted most.
It is back-to-school shopping time again! For many parents, it is just another ritual to start the new school year. They round up the kids and spend the day shopping for clothes and school supplies. One survey in 2012 put the average spending per child on back to school expenses at $179. But for many parents, taking the kids back-to-school shopping is a distant dream. For those parents, Jean Renny, from Seattle, Washington, is a dream come true.
Natalie Swaby, reporting for Seattle’s King5.Com, related?that Renny is in her 90’s, lives in a nursing home, and is in poor health. Even so, this doesn’t stop her from making a mark on the world around her. ?Every year, since 2004, Jean Renny has donated thousands of dollars to the White Center Salvation Army so low-income school children could buy school supplies and clothing. ?She began with $5000, helping 43 children in the first year, and has progressively given more. This year, Renny donated $20,000, which provided 90 children with $200 each for a back-to-school shopping trip to J.C. Penney.
Lora Marini Baker, a Salvation Army spokesperson, praised Jean Renny:
Her personal story is simple. She grew up as an only child in a middle class home. She was married, but they did not have children of their own. She wants to share her fortune with kids of The Salvation Army. She is very interested in helping children.
Due to her poor health, Jean can be pictured in her wheelchair, smiling widely for the cameras, but cannot go out to watch the kids shop at J.C. Penney, instead, asking them to write her letters about their experience, which are delivered to her nursing home.
On Tuesday morning, each child was given $200 and was escorted throughout the department store by volunteers clutching lists with names and items on them. ?One young boy needed a backpack, general clothing items, and shoes and yet another child had a very simple list – sweatshirts (maybe sweaters) and … and a flat screen television? ?Nope. ?Socks!
The Christian Post adds that the Salvation Army is a Christian-based organization devoted to good works, that Jean Renny is a devoted Christian who has been donating to the Salvation Army since 1988, and that her generosity has made a world of difference. Baker from the Salvation Army told them:
There was a child today whose feet were hurting him because his shoes were three sizes too small? that’s the way he showed up [to the shopping event] and we see that over and over again … This shopping event would not happen if it was not for her generosity […] kids having the opportunity to shop with $200 and that is significant. They spend it quickly because they need a lot. They need clothing, they need shoes, they need the basics like underwear and socks, and they need backpacks.
Here is a child being handed money – more money than he has probably ever seen in his life – and he asks to buy socks. ?This simple request sheds light on the needs of children everywhere, not only in Seattle, and the fulfillment of those needs through the generosity of individuals like Mrs. Jean Renny. Her gifts throughout the years should be celebrated and emulated as an example of what good people can do when they have extra cash. For her, the reward is the smiles on the faces of the children, knowing they will have backpacks where books don’t fall through holes in the bottom, sweaters to keep warm in, and, most of all, fresh socks.
Seattle is full of hidden jewels. ?From tiny parks that overlook the city or even have an authentic living room set, built out of concrete, to the “truly charming” stairs of Fremont, with “disparate levels due to Seattle’s hills”, to the abundance of fruit, growing everywhere – figs, blackberries, apples – providing a delicious snack during an afternoon stroll, among all these wonderful things below the busily glittering surface of this large city,?one person stands out, as she always does around this time of year, to give this town an even brighter image on the world map — Mrs. Jean Renny.
