Star readers’ legacies help give kids a summer to remember
Thanks to you, Fresh Air Fund reaches campaign goal of $650,000
On many mornings during the school year, Melanie Michael said her mother, a longtime teacher, would make a birthday cake before dawn. She would read her paper while the cake was in the oven, then hop in the shower, and afterward, get to work on the sandwiches.
Neli Davies was not making them for her children, at least, not the biological ones. It was a daily assembly line for the children in her class, the children she knew would not have a lunch without her help. And, well, nobody should celebrate a birthday without cake.
She was a Grade 1 teacher who helped find skates for students whose parents could never afford a pair. Her husband, Don, worked in social services in the city, and spent his spare time building bicycles for the children who crossed their radar. “Throughout the course of both of their careers, they came across many, many, many underprivileged — and underprivileged new immigrant — families,” said Michael, the eldest of their three daughters. “And they always tried to do what they could do.”
They were together for 49 years before Don died, in 2010. And after battling a number of serious illnesses, Neli died this past April, at 79.
In her obituary, it was requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be directed to two charities: the Toronto Star’s Santa Claus and Fresh Air funds.
“This was my mom’s explicit wish, that she wanted to offer opportunities, even in her death,” Michael said. “While she didn’t have a load of money to leave to any particular support program, this was a way that she could attract sums to give fresh air to young people.”
For 115 years, the Star’s Fresh Air Fund has been helping to provide children an escape from the city’s summer heat. And for dozens of the fund’s supporters over the last several years, the connection has run so strong it has been included in their final wishes.
This year, the goal was to raise $650,000 to send 25,000 disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. The campaign raised $656,496.
“Once again this year our readers’ generosity has exceeded our expectations,” said David Holland, acting Toronto Star publisher. “We deeply appreciate and are thrilled by the way our readers and our community have stepped forward to provide a camp experience for so many young people who might not otherwise have the opportunity.”
Josephine Danesi was born a little more than a decade after the fund was created, and she grew up in The Ward, the notorious Toronto slum now buried beneath some of the most coveted commercial real estate in the city. Her father took whatever jobs he could find.
Then, one summer, she got to go to camp. Her daughter Joan May said it was somewhere near Lake Simcoe and that her mother told her the Fresh Air Fund was involved. She said her mother would have been about 10 when she went.
“I cannot tell you how much it meant to her,” said May.
Danesi grew up to be a proud Torontonian — “You dare not say anything against the city of Toronto,” May said with a laugh — and when she died, in 2010, the family suggested that, as a gesture of sympathy, donations could be made to the Fresh Air Fund.
“My mom, close to her dying day, always spoke of the wonderful, wonderful time she had at camp and how the counsellors were just so wonderful,” her daughter said. “She learned how to swim and she would never have had the opportunity to learn how to swim in the city, I’m sure, in those days.”
Bob Furniss loved swimming, but like Danesi, he grew up with challenges in the city.
“His father was addicted to gambling,” said his son Don. “And, invariably, during the Depression, he would lose his job. They were constantly moving from one rooming house to another.”
Between Grade 2 and Grade 10, Don’s father Bob attended 11 different schools around Toronto. Don Furniss, who is mayor of Muskoka Lakes, three hours north of the city, said his father developed and retained a strong appreciation for the outdoors.
And when he died, in 2012, his will included a provision for the Fresh Air Fund.
“He firmly believed in the benefit of having inner-city kids, who were relatively poor and deprived, to get out into the country and experience nature,” Don said.
Melanie Michael said her parents also believed strongly in the importance of camp. They sent their own children, even when money was tight.
“We had no family vacations — ever — but they really believed that we should have our time at camp,” Michael said. “And they knew that it would offer a lot of opportunity for growth and in developing independence.”
Her mother, known to generations of Toronto schoolchildren as “Mrs. Davies,” was born in Timmins to Italian immigrants. The support from that immigrant community, Michael said, had a profound effect in shaping her mother’s sense of social responsibility.
Her last school was near the north end of the city and her class was filled with children from any number of backgrounds. Michael said her mother made a point of reaching out to a parent — or, if language was a barrier, someone else from that community — whenever a holiday rolled around. She would ask if a meal was associated with the holiday. “My mom would go out, and out of her own pocket, she would buy those groceries and bring them in with a couple of parents from the community — and with those kids, make the meal,” Michael said. “And they would all eat it together.”
And before she died, she said her mother wanted to ensure she could help more children.
“It was mom’s specific request — it wasn’t our idea — to support that fund.”
In Davies’s obituary, it noted that she was admired by friends and family “for the incredibly kind and generous person she was.”
And with her last wish to support the Fresh Air Fund, Davies passed along that generosity to those who made donations in her name, ensuring that, once again, children in need will get to dip a paddle in a lake or sleep out under the stars.
Or maybe even celebrate a birthday at camp. With cake, of course.