Alabama SCI Chapter Children's Hospital
The Start of a Permanent Trail

Just prior to Christmas, 2003, Richard McFalls, the public relations chairperson for the Alabama Chapter of SCI, made a donation of 5 Tom duBois Disney prints to the chapter. Richard’s intentions were to help the chapter find a good home for them. The prints are very colorful and bear matching serial numbers, which further enhances their value. The subjects of the prints include: Peter Pan, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella. Each features hidden characters within the pictures, which presents a challenge to locate.

Richard contacted the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham and suggested that the chapter would like to make a donation of the art. Coke Matthews at the hospital was the contact person and Mr. Matthews was already familiar with SCI through Dr. Juan Gutierrez, the Chief of Anesthesiology, who is a chapter member. Mr. Matthews was not familiar with Tom duBois prints and requested that we bring one by for them to see.

Richard, along with Randall Bush, took the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs print to the hospital to show to Mr. Matthews. Mr. Matthews was very excited and asked if he could keep the print to show others and decide on framing and location for display which would allow the largest number of children to see them. The framing and glass must meet special needs of the hospital’s epidemiology department due to the fact that the children would always be touching the pictures. Once the specifications were determined, Mark Smith of Décor-N-More was contacted to do the framing. Mark did a great job of matting and framing the pictures in exchange for a booth space at our annual fundraiser.

Mr. Matthews arranged for us to meet Denise Dexter who really won us over! Her enthusiasm and appreciation of the donation was over whelming. By this time it was apparent that the Alabama Chapter of SCI and Children’s Hospital were onto something great for the children. It was at this point that Richard decided on another donation, but that’s another story.
The pictures are now up and about 500,000 to 600,000 children and their families will walk by and try to count the number of characters they can find. There are many ways to heal and we hope that through our donation some children and their families may find a few minutes of happiness.
The work with Children’s Hospital has been so rewarding that we have decided to help them make a permanent trail through the hospital. SCI has now laid the groundwork for the start of this trail.