“Every kid should get a Halloween costume!”
Six-year- old Brinkley Minter loves Halloween. She also loves to paint, and last year, she combined her two favorite things— selling dozens of her spooky masterpieces to buy costumes so local shelter kids could enjoy their best Halloween ever!
“Mommy! Daddy! Come see!” Brinkley Minter exclaimed, dabbing a final brushstroke onto her painting of a Halloween witch. It was mid-october, and the Jacksonville, Florida, 6-year-old couldn’t wait to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating.
“It’s beautiful,” Gwynne and J.R. admired their daughter’s artwork. But for Brinkley, the witch painting was just a start.
J.R. is a social worker helping foster kids, and Brinkley had learned from him that not all kids have a nice home like hers.
“I’m going to paint more pictures and open an art stand,” she explained. “You know, like a lemonade stand, only I’m going to sell my paintings and use the money to buy homes for families who don’t have one.”
“That would be wonderful, but houses cost a lot of money. Maybe you could start with something a little smaller?” Gwynne offered.
“Maybe something for the kids at the Sulzbacher Center,” J.R. suggested, and told Brinkley about the center where struggling families got help.
Brinkley pondered for a second, then asked, “Do homeless kids get to wear costumes and go trick-or-treating?”
“I’m not sure,” J.R. said, but Brinkley already had a plan.
“I’ll use the money from my art stand to buy costumes for the kids,” she announced.
For the next week, Brinkley painted bats, witches, pumpkins, black cats and other spooky scenes, with a few butterfly paintings mixed in. Her mom posted about her art stand on Facebook and spread the word at her hair salon.
I’m definitely coming, wrote one of Gwynne’s FB friends.
I can’t make it, but I’m sending a donation, wrote another. And then a local paper shared the story with its readers.
By Saturday, Brinkley had produced more than three dozen masterpieces and put them on display in the family’s living room. A sign posted on the porch invited one and all.
Brinkley’s goal was to raise enough money to buy a dozen Halloween costumes for needy kids. But nearly every one of her paintings sold, and most people paid double, triple or even more to help the cause while other contributions continued to pour in.
“Five thousand dollars!” Gwynne could hardly believe the total. But that wasn’t all. When someone at the Players Championship and the PGA Tour heard about Brinkley’s art stand, the organization offered to match her donation.
“Is that enough to buy costumes?” was all Brinkley wanted to know.
“This is more than we need,” a Sulzbacher Center official explained, and offered Brinkley a second way she could help. “One of our missions is helping homeless families get set up in new apartments, would you like the rest of the money to go toward that?”
“You bet!” Brinkley agreed, thrilled as her original plan was to sell her paintings to help homeless families get homes.
“I just really like helping people and thought it would be a really good idea,” says Brinkley. “All kids like Halloween, and it wouldn’t be the same without costumes.”