Although it won’t air on national television, a new Cheyenne home makeover project is in the works, and its organizers need money, supplies and volunteer labor to make it happen.

In case you missed the story in Sunday’s Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2007/12/23/local_news_updates/20local_12-23-07.txt), let me briefly recap the situation:

The Cranmore family — Todd, Shannon, Colton (11), Caleb (8) and Chase (7) — lives in Laramie County in a house that is just outside of Cheyenne city limits. It has an inadequate well, so a petition has been filed with the city to have the property annexed so it can connect to city water and sewer services.

At the same time, Todd has been diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, is on full disability and currently is only able to walk short distances with the help of a cane. At some point, he will be full-time in a mobility scooter or wheelchair, but their house is not handicapped accessible. Shannon has become the provider for the family, along with keeping up with school and sports activities that the three boys are involved in.

The family came to the attention of Amy Clark-Walters and others during the publicity surrounding the taping last summer of an episode of the ABC reality series “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” After trying to get several local nonprofit organizations to take on the Cranmore family’s projects, Clark-Walters and others decided to form their own nonprofit, Community Care Concepts, to complete this and future projects in the Cheyenne area.

Help for the Cranmores started Saturday when local car dealer Tim Joannides and his family and Halladay Motors donated a 1999 Chevrolet Venture van to the family to help take Todd to his kids’ activities.

Here, Shannon and Todd look inside the van:

Two of the Cranmore boys check out their new ride:

Todd Cranmore inside the van:

Amy Clark-Walters said Wednesday that renovation work on the Cranmore house can’t start until after the Cheyenne City Council’s final annexation vote, currently scheduled for March 24. In the meantime, Community Care Concepts is collecting money, pledges for materials and volunteers willing to help do the work. For more information on these opportunities, click on “To give your money,” “To give your time” or “To give something” at right.

The project could cost as much as $200,000, since the home will be remodeled throughout to make it handicapped accessible and an 18-by-40-foot addition is planned to add a master bedroom and new bedrooms for the kids.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of fundraising, the annexation petition and construction, once it begins.

Of course, the plan for Community Care Concepts is to complete the Cranmore house and then move on to another worthy project. The new nonprofit group’s mission statement is “to assist families in the local community facing financial and medical hardships that in need of major home repairs to help improve their quality of life.”

Although no one wants to face these types of struggles in their lifetimes, we all know that they are simply part of life. Thankfully there are caring, compassionate residents like Clark-Walters willing to lend a hand. Here’s hoping we’ll be covering Community Care Concepts projects for years to come!

UPDATE: At 3 p.m. today, Karen Scheid in our business office reported that this year’s total is now $29,058.72, which is slightly below the 2000 total of $29,454.81. Still, a great year overall! — Brian 

Final totals are in for this year’s Empty Stocking Fund, and the news is both exciting and a bit surprising. This year’s contribution total of $28,708.72 beat the 2001 total of $26,537.09 by more than $2,100!

Larry Catalano, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle’s controller, said this morning that if it’s not the best year the program has ever had, it’s definitely one of the best. He said it also surprised him.

“Honestly, given some of the negative economic factors, I thought it might be down a bit this year,” Catalano said. “I can’t tell you there’s a specific reason why contributions are up, except the people of the Cheyenne community are extremely generous when it comes to giving to the Empty Stocking Fund and the Laramie County Community Christmas Program.”

That generosity helped make Christmas a happier time for many Cheyenne-area families, who were able to have a nice Christmas meal and additional food thanks to this fund and the Bar Bucks program.

In fact, WTE photographer Larry Brinlee made a comment after taking photos last Friday that there’s nothing like seeing the gratitude of these families as they pick up their food boxes to get you in the Christmas spirit. Here are some of Larry’s images:

Of course, donations can be made anytime, year-round by sending checks to Empty Stocking Fund, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, 702 W. Lincolnway, Cheyenne, WY 82001. 

Thanks again, folks, for making the Empty Stocking Fund and Laramie County Community Christmas Program such a great success in 2007!

Many thanks to all of you who have given your time, your money and your gifts to those in need in southeast Wyoming since “Everyone gives, Everyone gains” began on Dec. 2.

The past three weeks have just reaffirmed my belief that the people who live in the Cheyenne area are among the most giving people in the country.

Today is designed to be a day of rest, a day to spend time with family and friends, and a day to thank God for his many blessings. But somewhere someone is doing something good for another person, whether it is serving a meal to a homeless person, delivering a Christmas present to someone who didn’t expect one or just shaking someone’s hand and saying Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow’s another day and another chance to help someone else. Until then, have a blessed holiday!

Christmas arrived at the Babcock house a day early today as a special group of truck drivers made a special delivery to a family that lost everything in a Thanksgiving house fire.

Last week, Truett Barfield, a CR England truck driver who works out of the new Wal-Mart grocery distribution center, called me to ask if I wanted to know about a project he was involved with. This is a story best told by Barfield himself:

“Some of us drivers were trying to find a family to support this holiday season when this happened: My wife was out on her delivery route with the Tribune when she noticed the (burned out) trailer. I came back to the house and looked up the article in the paper. When I told the others at our drivers’ lounge, we all decided that this was the family we were going to play Santa and bring a little brightness to this holiday season. We’ve gotten donations from all drivers and their families; even the (Marines) are going to be there to give the boys brand new bikes.

“We, the drivers, just don’t want to be known as bullies of the highway but also as ones that can be counted on when things like this happen and also be part of the community. Santa will arrive on a big red truck with his bag of gifts, with Mrs. Claus and Head Elf in tow.”

That’s exactly what happened, and this photo from earlier today on Allison Court shows that the bikes were certainly a hit.

I’m sure the other gifts were equally well received and much appreciated.

Congratulations to all of the truck drivers involved in making this holiday much happier for one local family than the last one was!

Give a gift of life the day before Christmas or the day after this year by participating in one of two community blood drives. This gift doesn’t cost a penny, it just takes an hour or so, and you can save up to three lives with one pint of blood.

American Medical Response will host a Christmas Eve community blood drive from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday at AMR’s facility, 600 E. Carlson St. To make an appointment, call 634-8533 or go to www.bloodhero.com.

The Cheyenne Police Department will host a day-after-Christmas blood drive from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the department, 2020 Capitol Ave. To make an appointment, call Gus Gezzie at 637-6500 or go to www.bloodhero.com.

So far, community response to the request for blood donors seems to be pretty good. I was at the United Blood Services donor center on Eighth Avenue giving blood Wednesday, and the number of donors was keeping staff there very busy. Let’s keep that trend going!

And if you’ve never given blood before or never considered it, let me reassure you that it’s simple and the phlebotomists here are great at minimizing discomfort during the process. Only one in 20 Americans, on average, donates blood, so anything we can do to improve that statistic would be one of the best Christmas gifts we could give.

I have great news to share today about the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle’s Empty Stocking Fund, which is used to help fund the Laramie County Community Christmas Program!

As of this morning, generous residents in southeast Wyoming have given $24,074.21 to pay for Christmas food boxes for low-income residents! Looking at day-by-day totals each year back to 2001, the fund’s Dec. 20 total is more than $2,000 higher than the next-highest total, which was in 2001 (the lowest total for this date was $16,421.51 in 2003).

The largest amount raised in the past six years was $26,537.09, also in 2001, so we’re less than $2,500 away from the best year in seven with four more days to officially tally the contributions!

When the Bar Bucks contributions are added, the best year for fundraising was in 2005, when the combined total was $41,502.17. That year, the Bar Bucks program raised $15,882.83!

Information about how to donate to the Empty Stocking Fund and the Bar Bucks program can be found at right under “To give your money.” Keep those generous contributions coming! And many thanks to all of you who have helped those less fortunate have a merrier Christmas!

Some of you might know Keith Rounds, a long-time Cheyenne resident who was the spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation for many years before retiring a few years back. And those who know Keith know that he isn’t the type of person to be sitting around in a rocking chair all day.

So it didn’t surprise me that Keith was one of the first people to e-mail me about a project he is involved with after “Everyone Gives, Everyone Gains” launched Dec. 2. It’s called the Scottish Rite Childhood Language Clinic, and it has been operating in Cheyenne since 1991.

Sponsored by the Scottish Rite Masons, the clinic provides free care to any child who has speech or language problems. A full-time, licensed and certified speech pathologist (who is the clinician) and a part-time licensed occupational therapist work in the Masonic Temple at 1820 Capitol Ave.

Keith says the clinic accepts any child who has a speech/language problem, some of whom are autistic and some of whom suffer other problems. There are currently about 65 children in the program, which is quite a workload for the one clinician. The program works closely with STRIDE Learning Center, Head Start and Laramie County School District 1, which identify the children who need treatment and refer them to the Masons for one-on-one or small group therapy.

Because the treatment is free — no cost to parents or their insurance – the Masons rely on members and donors in the community to cover operating expenses. The program’s annual budget is around $100,000, but demand for the services still exceeds its resources, so donors are desperately needed. To donate, click on “To give your money” at right.

This is one of several very worthy programs I have learned of in the last three weeks that I hope the community steps up to support year-round. Thanks, Keith, for bringing it to my attention!

GEAR-UP, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, is a program at Laramie County Community College that helps low-income students in seventh through 12th grades in Laramie and Albany counties prepare for college.

Lauren Jones, one of two GEAR-UP assistant outreach coordinators, said the program offers tutoring, prep for the ACT test, college application and scholarship help to students. Volunteers also go into the schools and meet with the students once a month to train them on various life skills.

Also once a month on Saturdays, they meet with students to improve life skills and complete service projects. They use federal and state grant money to take the students on college visits and a variety of educational trips, and they offer a Summer Leadership Academy on the LCCC campus.

So what can you do? First, the program needs volunteer tutors to go into the schools and work with the students there. They also need mentors for the Saturday academies that will be consistent role models for these students.

In addition, the program relies on monetary donations and food donations from local vendors so they can feed the students lunch during the Saturday academies.

For more information on how you can help GEAR-UP, contact Jones at 432-1665 (office) or 286-0681 (cell) or e-mail her at lajones@lccc.wy.edu, or the other assistant outreach coordinator, Nicole Pritchard, at 432-1664 or npritcha@lccc.wy.edu.

Although it isn’t something you can do, I wanted to share a great thing going on this month in Wyoming.

For the fifth year in a row, Pinnacle Bank-Wyoming is providing money to the men and women of the Wyoming National Guard who are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan through the holidays. The bank has contacted Guard officials and will begin distributing $400 checks to families of the deployed soldiers, according to a news release. The only criteria that must be met to get a check is that the service member has to be deployed during the month of December.

Doug Weedin, president of Pinnacle Bank-Wyoming, said, “We want to show our support for these men and women. It is our hope that this will make Christmas a bit more enjoyable for those separated from their families during the holiday season.”

During the past four years, Pinnacle has sent $400 checks to 852 men and women serving through the Wyoming National Guard amounting to $340,800. The program also extends to Colorado and Nebraska, bringing the total to $2.1 million donated to Guard members in the three states.

I think it’s a great thing the Dinsdale family, which operates these community banks, does for these people who are giving up their holidays to serve our country. My hat’s off to them and everyone who is working to support our deployed military!

It may seem that United Blood Services is always “in urgent need” of blood donors. But there are times of the year when that need is more urgent than the rest of the year. Following a major storm like the winter weather Wyoming has experienced the last two weeks is one of those times. Another is when many regular donors are deferred due to colds or flu, which often is the case during winter months.

That’s why it came as no surprise when the news release from Sharon Roberts-Meyer landed in my e-mail inbox today. Both conditions — poor driving weather and illness referrals — are at work this month.

“This problem took a couple of weeks to create, and it will take a couple of weeks to recover,” said Roberts-Meyer, the marketing and communications specialist for United Blood Services, in the release. “The need is now, and we ask volunteer donors to come into the center these last two weeks of December.”

The blood center is located at 112 E. Eighth Ave. in Cheyenne and is open from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday and 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Saturday. Appointments are encouraged, but walk-ins are welcome. Call 638-3326 or go to www.bloodhero.com to schedule an appointment. Donors must be at least 17 years old, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health.

A quick check of my blood donor card shows my last donation was Oct. 20 and my next donation can come Dec. 15, which is tomorrow. See you next week at the blood center!