After Losing Everything, Woman Keeps Her Telethon Pledge

Leasa Holmes and her family lost everything in the floods caused by Hurricane Floyd--their home, their possessions, their children’s toys.

But in the months they spent struggling to put their life together, Holmes could not stop thinking about someone even worse off and the promise she made to help.

So when she finally scraped together the $20 she pledged to the Muscular Dystrophy Association two weeks before their Sept. 17 evacuation, she apologized for taking nearly three months to send it in.

“A pledge is a promise, and I made a promise, specifically for helping a child get a wheelchair,” Holmes, an executive secretary at Wayne Community College, said this week. “I wanted them to get the help.”

Holmes had never given to the Jerry Lewis telethon before, but announcers caught her ear when they said the money donated during a certain time period would help a sick child get a wheelchair.

Holmes, her husband, Chris, and their three children are still living with her brother outside Goldsboro, N.C., but she never thought about holding back the $20. They got one month’s emergency rent from the government, but her brother won’t let them pay rent.

“He wants us to save our money because, essentially, we’re going to have to start all over,” she said. The family hopes to be back in a home of their own early next year.

Holmes hasn’t told her 8-year-old twins or 10-year-old son that all their possessions were swept away with their Goldsboro home.

“But as they ask for a specific thing, like a stuffed toy, I say, ‘No, sweetheart, that’s gone, but we’ll get an even better one.’ ”

Her letter and the apology caused a stir at MDA headquarters, said association spokesman Jim Brown.

“Jerry Lewis followed through right away,” Brown said. “He wanted to know what we could find out about this individual who was carrying through on her pledge under such circumstances. It touched him.”

The vast majority of people who pledge to the telethon follow through with checks, Brown said.

“But the bottom line is, certainly, there is a small percentage of people, because of hardship, who do not honor their pledge,” Brown said. “Yet here’s someone who went beyond what anyone would consider the norm to help purchase a wheelchair for a child.”

Holmes said she has never regretted making the $20 pledge.

“I’d do it again,” she said. “It is a lot of money right now, and yet it is not a lot of money. During this time, I probably couldn’t have sent more than I pledged. But I probably will do that much, and I hope even more, again in the future.”