SHINING AGAIN
Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams returns after a two-year hiatus
Lights were shining again along 13 Mile Road in Royal Oak on Friday.
After a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams returned to Beaumont Hospital. It will be held at 8 p.m. each night through Dec. 24.
At a Pediatric Family Advisory Council meeting in 2017, Megan McClellan shared that she saw a national news story about a group of restaurants on the East Coast that had a tradition of shining flashlights across the street at a local hospital.
“I shared the idea with the council and my thoughts on creating a similar tradition here,” McClellan said. “The news story came on in the fall and I thought, ‘That would be a really nice thing to do around the holidays because it must really feel terrible to be in the hospital during that magical time of year.’”
“When we first heard the idea, it sounded like something really important that could make a difference for our patients and families. Our parents, like Megan, have firsthand knowledge of what was important to them while they were in the hospital, so we really wanted to try to make this happen,” Kathleen Grobbel, Child Life supervisor at Beaumont Children’s and an employee facilitator on the advisory council, said.
With just a couple weeks to share the event with the public, mostly through word of mouth to family and friends, the council hoped for a good turnout.
“We didn’t want to get people psyched for this and then have nobody down there. It was nail-biting,” McClellan said. “I remember getting so excited the first night when people started rolling in, and we had about 50 to 100 people come out.”
From the 2017-19 holiday seasons, anywhere from hundreds to more than 1,000 people come out nightly to shine beams of light up to the windows of the pediatric unit for children to enjoy. Pediatric patients, in turn, return the festive glow with flashlights of their own. The event grew into one that typically draws people, some in groups, from throughout the Metro Detroit area.
Organizers say it is uplifting for patients and their loved ones alike.
Katie Gott, of Royal Oak, is also a mem
ber of the Pediatric Family Advisory Council. Her son Henry died in 2015 at just 3 years old, after a yearlong battle with hepatoblastoma, a very rare form of liver cancer.
“We spent the entire
month of December 2014 in the hospital,” Gott said. “When you’re in there, you kind of lose track of time and everything just blends together. It’s very numbing.”
The nightly holiday events have helped her cope with her loss.
“As both a nurse and mother, I thought I had a unique perspective,”
Gott said. “I wanted to do something to make the experience better for other people who would be going through a similar situation. It has been very rewarding and a good way for me to keep Henry alive.”
For more information on the event and to register a group, visit beaumont.org/moonbeams.