Linden boy raising funds for St. Jude’s
Rowdy Haley’s 10th birthday is coming up soon. He’s getting ready to give gifts. That’s right. “Give” gifts, not get them.
On his 9th birthday last year in Linden, he raised $700 with a downtown chili dog sale. Then, he sold some T-shirts and collected money from his birthday party instead of getting gifts. Soon he had $1,550, and a week later gave it all to the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Shreveport, Louisiana.
“This will be Rowdy’s fifth year of giving to someone else on his birthday,” his mother Brandy Haley said. “He won’t keep a dime of the money he collects. Never even mentions it. Always glad to give it.”
The reason is simple, his mother and dad Justin Haley say. It seems Rowdy believes birthdays and charities go together.
This year, the COVID-19 virus is clouding Rowdy’s 10th birthday plans. He had wanted to beat last year’s amount by $100, he told his mother.
“He’s doing it again, only this time the money will go to St. Jude’s,” Brandy said.
“He knew it would be hard. And now current circumstances have kept him from pursuing his birthday party plans. He’d already had the idea of a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day raffle, and he had some things gathered for that.”
The downtown chili dog sales is still on the burner, and he has already met with Inkling Print Co. to get started on the T-shirts, Rowdy’s father said.
The family is hopeful. Rowdy’s gifting occurs every year now.
“Every year he’s ready to do it again,” Justin said. “As soon as we get through, he’s talking about something else for next year. ‘I’m ready,’ he says. He really enjoys it.”
As soon as things looks better and safer for him to be out and about, the family said rowdy will be out there.
His birthday is June 29. He will be 10. By then, in one way of looking at it, Rowdy and others helping him may have defeated a part of that virus themselves.