Allan Munroe has had a tough few years. The 87-year-old grandpa and father of four has fought heart disease and the early stages of dementia. He broke his hip and spent months in a rehab center. But, worst of all, he spent countless hours seated in a wooden chair next to the bed where his wife of more than sixty years lay slowly losing her four-year battle with lung cancer.
Norma Munroe died in May, ending months of the same scene: Allan, seated beside her, his hand holding hers and his eyes glued to the screen where his beloved Boston Red Sox played on TV. As Norma's disease finished its ugly course, the familiar procession of balls and strikes, outs and base hits, gave Allan "an escape from a reality that hasn't always been so great," his granddaughter Angela McKinnon told Mashable in August.
A couple years ago McKinnon and other family members got some money together to buy Allan a commemorative brick at Boston's legendary home field, Fenway Park. They hoped it would help take his mind off Norma's disease and his own sadness. Here's what the brick says:
"Grandpa was married to her for so long and you could just tell he was lost," McKinnon told Mashable of Norma's death.
So the family hatched a plan. The goal: Get grandpa back to Fenway for the first time in more than 50 years. A Massachusetts native, Allan attended many games at Fenway as a young man, but then life separated him and his revered team. He enlisted in the Air Force and traveled the world. After that, he and Norma moved to Florida, where they raised their four kids and he worked for the Brevard County Sheriff's Department.
He watched or listened to hundreds upon hundreds of Red Sox games on TV and radio during those decades, and even made it to a few in person when the Sox played the nearby Tampa Bay Rays. But he still ached to get back to Fenway one final time, McKinnon says.
There was one major problem with the family's plan for Allan, though. Between their own health issues and education loans, they didn't have enough money to bring Allan back to Boston, pay for a hotel and buy tickets to a game. So McKinnon launched a campaign on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, hoping the kindness of strangers would somehow make their dream come true.
After six weeks they'd raised $1,500. That was well short of their $5,000 goal, with just two weeks left to make it happen.
After we covered the campaign on Aug. 30, an interesting thing happened: readers, touched by Allan's love for Norma, shared the story far and wide on social media. Donations came pouring in. Within a few days, they had exceeded their $5,000 goal, and the fund eventually topped $6,500.
They were going to Fenway. But that wasn't all.
Others made donations that went beyond cash. A Boston-area PR director named Kimberley Ring took it upon herself to drum up more support. Red Sox owner John Henry gave the family some of his own seats for a game. A Boston entrepreneur named Ernie Boch, Jr., decided to help out as well. Flights were donated, and lodging too.
Not only would Allan go to Fenway. He'd go in style. On Sept. 11 — he and Norma's 64th wedding anniversary, and the first since she died — Allan and his family flew to Boston.
"He was able to smile on a day he otherwise would have been much more depressed," McKinnon says.
On Sept. 14, Allan, his four children, McKinnon and her husband went to a day game at Fenway, with the Red Sox facing off against their rival New York Yankees. Before the game, Allan, in a wheelchair, was pushed onto the field, where he delivered an emphatic "play ball!" before thousands of cheering fans:
He also got to see his commemorative brick for the first time ever:
The trip's effect on Allan's spirit was obvious to his family, helping to dull the lingering pain of Norma's death.
"It gave him a second wind," McKinnon says. "Even his memory wasn't as bad. He had that twinkle back in his eye, something we hadn't seen in a while and thought we might not see again."
The Sox even walloped the hated Yankees that day, 5 runs to 1. In the stands Allan mimicked some of the players who have grown burly beards this season as the Sox make a playoff push:
While ticket and travel donations covered the trip's cost for some, the family still spent a few thousand dollars flying additional members out to Boston and seeing nearby relatives. McKinnon says the remaining $3,500 or so will be donated to the Jimmy Fund, a foundation at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
McKinnon hopes that extra money will help others beat the disease that took Norma's life. But most of all, she says, the family is touched by the surge of support from complete strangers.
"Not only did grandpa get to live his dream by getting to go back to the park, but seeing how incredible people can be by making it happen was amazing for him," she tells Mashable. "He stayed up until midnight the night of the game. He said he didn't want the day to end. He couldn't stop smiling."
Images: Angela McKinnon, Boston Red Sox
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