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Dear Friends and Family,
I was recently honored by being crowned Mrs. Georgia 2006.
My duties are off to an exciting start, as I prepare to work with the March of
Dimes to raise awareness of the plight of the premature infant.
To date Sherri and her Preemie Teemie have raised over $7200 for the March of Dimes!
What once were a series of tragedies in my life have now developed
into a focused passion. Of my five living children, four were born at or before
30 weeks gestation. One son lived only 7 hours. My faith in God and the
support of my friends and family enabled me to emotionally survive these
challenges, regain my footing, and share these experiences to help others who
have been, or might be, at risk for a similar fate.
What winning the Mrs. Georgia 2006 crown gives me is the opportunity to share
my personal story with thousands of other Georgians who have experienced
similar tragic experiences due to the challenges of preterm birth. During my
daughter Kate’s four month hospitalization, I kept a daily journal of my
joys and fears, details of Kate’s progress and my prayers for her
recovery. These frank and revealing notes of my greatest life challenge have
found themselves an interested partner: the March of Dimes.
This journal is currently being
published by Hill Street Press and will be available for purchase in bookstores
and online sites beginning in early 2007.
As a child growing up in the 1970’s, I was familiar with the March of
Dimes, but was unfamiliar with its objectives. I remember seeing the standing
cardboard towers and canisters for dimes at stores but hardly knew that this
small change would one day save my child’s life. I thank God for every
person who dropped spare change in those jars, walked a mile in the annual
walks, and slipped a dime into one of those slots.
The March of Dimes began as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in
1938 (renamed the March of Dimes in 1979) by a polio-ridden President Franklin
Roosevelt. It indirectly began in our own state, when in 1924,
FDR sought the therapeutic effects on his polio in the warm spring waters of Warm Springs, Ga.
 Others followed his example, and the Warm Springs Foundation was established.
This foundation raised money from individuals during the Great Depression to
find a cure for the scourge of polio. This Georgia organization would become
FDR’s fundraising model for the NFIP (the March of Dimes.) After Jonas
Salk found a vaccine cure for polio in the mid 1950’s, the March of Dimes
re-focused their resources on saving babies from birth defects, low birthweight and preterm birth. This has been its mission
for nearly 50 years.
Fifty years is a long time, but an old story once
shared by President Kennedy illustrates how our work today produces fruit for
generations yet unborn. A distinguished French field marshal once told his
gardener to plant a tree, and the gardener said, "Well, you don't want to
plant that, it's going to take a hundred years to flower." And he said,
"In that case, plant it this afternoon."
The tree that saved the lives of my children was planted in 1938, and flowered
in the faces of my healthy but premature children that you see in the photos.
Sadly, our son Jack was lost because the work is not yet finished. His face is
absent from the pictures. His life, however brief, has inspired my energies to
help future children not suffer this dreadful end. Let’s plant another
tree today…make that this afternoon.
Sherri Goggin
Mrs.
Georgia 2006
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