WILKINSON — Seven-year-old DeLaney Truebenbach loves to play host to a charitable project every year around Christmastime. A patient at Riley Hospital for Children for her kidney disease for many years, DeLaney usually likes to find ways to give back to Riley when the holiday season rolls around.
But this year, she found out that many of her classmates needed her help.
DeLaney called upon her community and made this year’s special project happen. More than 50 elementary students, friends and parents came together to create hand-made fleece blankets, which DeLaney and her friends handed out to 18 of their Eastern Hancock classmates the week before Christmas.
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Officials at Eastern Hancock reached out to the Truebenbach family with the names of 18 elementary-aged children in the school system whose families could use a dose of good cheer, said DeLaney’s mom, Ashley Truebenbach. As they discussed ideas for their good will project this year, Ashley and DeLaney started racking their brains for ways they could help these students stay warm as the temperatures started to drop.
“I was thinking of things like hats and toboggans, and then her eyes lit up,” Ashley said. “She ran upstairs to her room and grabbed a blanket and showed it to me. She said: ‘What about like these, mom? The ones that Gaga made us.’”
The idea was certainly daunting, Ashley said. How do you come up with the funds to make 18 full-size fleece blankets?
But DeLaney had a plan.
After calling as many friends as she could, they had no problem getting the community to pitch in to make the project happen, Ashley said. Every single person they reached out to was willing to contribute in some way, she added. Around 20 of DeLaney’s classmates and friends gathered at Wilkinson Church of Christ on Dec. 14 to work together in getting the blankets ready for delivery. Several moms came to help out, which made it a nice mommy-daughter date night for everyone, Ashley said.
DeLaney’s friends purchased all of their own materials for the project, bringing along fleece fabric with colorful designs ranging from superheroes to Christmas decorations. They spent the evening crafting the gifts by layering cuts of fleece together, then cutting strips along the edges of the fabric and tying them off together to make personalized winter blankets.
“It’s Jesus’s birthday, and I think we all want to celebrate,” DeLaney said. “So everybody should be able to.”
“We just want to give some nice presents and making them happy, let them know that we’re here for them and we’re praying for them,” DeLaney added.
The students delivered the blankets personally to the parents of their classmates, Ashley said. When they entered the Eastern Hancock front office, gifts in hand, it seemed to send a lot of people over the emotional edge, she said.
It was nice to get together to help kids so they can stay warm this winter, said one of DeLaney’s friends and helpers, Hannah Womack.
“It was fun to get together with friends and also to help people in need,” Hannah said.
Most years, DeLaney and her mom organize their charitable ideas and dub them “DeLaney’s Project.” But this year, they decided to call it “DeLaney’s Friends,” Ashley said.
“She told me: ‘Because it’s not about me, mom. It’s about my friends,’” Ashley Truebenbach said. “And as a parent, that made me tear up a little bit.”
