HELENA — Students throughout the Helena area at schools like Jim Darcy have created Valentine’s Day cards that will be distributed to such places as nursing homes and hospice facilities throughout the community.
“I think that everybody should get a Valentine's Day card because you don’t always feel like you have people there supporting you, and I think that you always should know that you have people that are supporting you,” says 3rd grader, Kennedy Alger.
Alger and the other kids in her class worked hard to create numerous Valentine’s Day cards in order to help bring some friendship and joy to community members who may be in places like hospice or in home health care.
“I wanted to write it ‘cause not everybody has friends, and some people just need to have something to make them feel loved,” says 3rd grader, Chace Hedden.
This will be the 3rd year this program has helped connect students and elderly folks in the Helena area. Students from Helena Public Schools, Clancy, and East Helena participate.
Hazel Noonan, Area Manager for Inhabit Home Health and Hospice, and pioneer of this event, says that she started this program in order to help brighten the days of those who may be feeling lonely in the later years of their lives.
“They just light up. They absolutely light up, just with the receipt of the Valentine, they just, and to be acknowledged and remembered. And again, like I said, with the memories, it just, kind of a flood of memories,” says Noonan.
Last year alone Noonan received 3,000 Valentine’s Day cards from kids throughout the area and she thinks she may get even more this year.
“I think it's the beauty of child's artwork. It, you know, the notes open up backwards, the misspelled words, whatever, the little handy artwork, it just brightens the residents’ day,” says Noonan.
