Woman Who Lost Business Under COVID Turns Her Defeat Into a Win for Sick Children
Marie Liburdi’s dream faded away during the COVID pandemic.
But before it was gone, Liburdi helped build the dreams of some of her region’s most needy kids.
Liburdi founded a business called Teaching Toys, whose goal was what you might expect from the name — to provide educational toys for children.
“Opening this store has been my heart’s desire,” Liburdi told the Wyandotte Warrior when her business opened in Trenton, Michigan, last December. “I have always wanted a one-stop shop where people can find fun, educational toys.”
But life had other plans. Lockdowns and the other effects of the pandemic meant her sales could not support her dream.
“It’s financial devastation for many small businesses,” Liburdi said, according to WJBK-TV. “I don’t know one toy store where kids can’t come in and touch and play and try and use materials … COVID and germs, it’s just a no-win situation.”
Liburdi saw a TV spot about a group called the Bottomless Toy Chest, which delivers toys to pediatric cancer patients all year long.
Liburdi donated to the organization all the toys she had left when her business closed this year. She said the donation was valued at several thousand dollars.
The gift was priceless to those receiving it.
“Our mission is to help empower children through the magic of toys,” Mickey Guisewite, executive director of The Bottomless Toy Chest, told WJBK. “To get these toys at this time is really going to help us not only be able to continue our program but to expand it.”
The Bottomless Toy Chest began as a gift of love, Guisewite wrote on the charity’s website.
“Life as my family knew it changed forever the moment we heard the doctor say, ‘Your son has Leukemia.’ In that instant we were yanked out of the comfortable, predictable world we knew, and flung into a panic-filled world of uncertainty and fear as our son began to fight for his life,” she wrote, noting that he “successfully completed his treatment and is now a healthy, active teenager.”
But she wrote that she’ll never forget “what it was like to be in the hospital with a critically ill child, 24/7 for days and weeks at a time. It is a relentlessly grueling existence for anyone, particularly a young person who is not only suddenly critically ill, but who has had every comfort of home and familiar routine taken away.”
“I found that in many cases, the strain of having a sick child had completely tapped the family’s resources, leaving them nothing extra to spend on things to help pass the time for their hospitalized child. It is extremely difficult for both parents and children to meet the daily challenges that cancer treatment brings,” she wrote.
Thank you to Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers for their continued support during their Season of Giving. Visit a Metro Detroit Chevy dealership to donate a brand new toy. These toys will help bring joy to children with cancer. Happy Shopping! #BlackFriday #SeasonofGiving #BTCSmiles pic.twitter.com/Z0PTJqjVQD
— Bottomless Toy Chest (@BTCSmiles) November 27, 2020
She created her charity to fill that void.
“My dream is that every child hospitalized with cancer will be able to look forward to frequent packages filled with fun, creativity and love; gifts that ultimately will help give them the miracle of courage and strength to fight back,” Guisewite wrote.
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