Help Fill A Dream - Beginning
When Rick Thomas first met a young girl named Bernadette in 1985 he didn’t know that she had a dream or that he would be instrumental in helping her realize it. Bernadette traveled on Rick’s BC Transit bus with her mother everyday and always sat near the front. After a while Rick struck up a conversation with them and found out that her mother was taking her to Victoria General Hospital to be treated for Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare disease causing premature aging and early death.
Rick was taken with the girl’s story and with her desire to visit her grandmother who she had talked to on the phone but had never met. He also found out that her mother was a single parent who didn’t have the financial means to take her daughter to Nova Scotia where the grandmother lived.
Rick not only had sympathy for Bernadette’s situation, he was also determined to do something about it. First he checked with existing organizations such as the Make A Wish Foundation but found that nothing was available in Canada. He then considered simply paying for the trip with his own money but at his wife’s suggestion decided to set up a charity to help not only Bernadette but others in similar situations.
Within 6 months, in June of 1986, Help Fill A Dream was up and running as a registered charity and thus started 25 years of service to Vancouver Island families. Shortly after that Bernadette and her mother left on a 3 week trip to Nova Scotia. A trip the mother remembers through the original Help Fill A Dream jacket she received and still has.
After that initial success Rick started raising more money and ended up helping some 8 or 9 kids in that first year. He also approached Barry George, a friend and fellow BC Transit driver, and asked him to join the board of Help Fill A Dream. Barry became the first Executive Director and started a long association between the foundation and BC Transit.
Barry said recently, “Rick was just determined to help these kids with life threatening conditions and I was glad to help him out. The fact is that in those early days we were often flying by the seat of our pants just to get things done. We made some mistakes along the way but we never let that affect the kids or their families.”
By 1988 the foundation’s work had become well known and Rick was named, “Man Of The Year” by Victoria radio station CFAX. The $5,000 prize helped the foundation continue it’s work as it made the transition from individual contributions to more corporate sponsorship and business involvement.
While the foundation was flourishing Barry suffered a personal loss when his wife died of cancer. This led to some long discussions with Rick about mortality and getting one’s affairs in order, discussions that were an unfortunate prelude to another loss as Rick died of a heart attack in the spring of 1989. He was in his forties at the time and simply passed away while resting on his couch after cutting his lawn.
“Rick was a great guy and it was a huge shock when he passed. Fortunately he had done enough before then to ensure that his dream of helping young people and their families could continue on without him.” Barry said.
So, a story that started out with a kind man helping a young girl fill her dream comes to the end of it’s first chapter on a sad note with Rick Thomas gone at too young an age and Bernadette gone from an incurable disease that made her old before her time. The good news is that Help Fill A Dream continued and that there are more success stories to come.
by Ray Dampsy-Jones