Ronald McDonald House guests find fun the best prescription Adam Bennett, 8, jumped up and down, punching the air with excitement. His brother Ethan, 7, was one of the winners at a Saturday race of Hot Wheels cars at Durham's Ronald McDonald House. Every weekend, Adam travels from his home in Wilson to Durham to visit his little sister, Miracle, and his mother, who stays in Durham to be with the 3-month-old baby, a patient in Duke University Hospital's pediatric Intensive Care Unit. "The left part of her heart is smaller than the right part," explained Adam, hands fluttering on his own chest. The Hot Wheels racing was a good distraction, he said. "Sometimes, you start to get worried about the baby," Adam said, ready to send his Hot Wheels car downhill on a 50-foot track at the Ronald McDonald House, but suddenly seeming wise beyond his years. "It gets your mind off." Like Adam, siblings and family members had an afternoon of Hot Wheels racing to do just that: ease their minds off the serious illnesses their children are battling in Durham's hospitals. Families at the Ronald McDonald House are from out of town, and the house serves as a haven in their stressful lives, said the House's Executive Director Noreen Strong. For the Saturday event, the Raleigh-based East Coast Hot Wheels Club provided the 50-foot track, and Diecast 911, a charity made up of Hot Wheels aficionados, donated 400 cars. Donnie Morris of Zebulon and his brother-in-law, Bryan Pope of Knightdale, founded Diecast 911 about six months ago, Morris said. Morris' wife works at WakeMed as an MRI technician and a couple of years ago she started to give out some of Morris' Hot Wheels cars as a prize for children after they had their MRIs. Soon Morris started to ask other Hot Wheels fans for more cars, and before he knew it, the charity had donated 1,500 Hot Wheels cars to WakeMed, he said. The Durham racing was the group's second major donation and its first charity event. "There's nothing like offering a Hot Wheels to a kid. They love it," Morris said. He has been collecting the 99-cent cars for as long as he can remember, he said. "They were the cheap toys when I was growing up," said Morris, 29, a draftsman who works in Rocky Mount. Every morning at 7, he stops at a Rocky Mount Wal-Mart to check on new Hot Wheels, he said. "New stuff comes every day, so you never know what you will find," he said, estimating that he had more than 5,000 cars. Sometimes he and Pope do night runs, getting to the stores around 10 p.m. when employees are putting Hot Wheels on the shelves, to be the first ones to get a particularly desirable car, he said. About 90 percent of Durham Ronald McDonald House guests are from North Carolina, but it is not unusual to have guests from all 50 states and abroad, especially families of children suffering from certain genetic disorders being studied at Duke University Hospital, Strong said. The 15,000-square-foot house is full, with 23 families occupying rooms. Occupancy is based on the needs of families, but usually those who live the farthest away from the hospital where their children are being treated, and those who need to be away from home for long periods of time get to live in the house. "We do have a waiting list," said Strong. "There are about 400 families a year that we are not able to serve." Strong spoke excitedly about a "family room" planned for the pediatric floor of Duke University Hospital. The 700-square-foot room is being designed to have the feel of a home, rather than a hospital's waiting room. It would serve families from Durham as well, many of who now sleep on waiting rooms' plastic chairs because they don't want to leave their children, Strong said. The area will have laundry facilities and a shower, as well as a computer station so parents can keep in touch with family members elsewhere. The Ronald McDonald House expects to open the room in the spring. "That's not going to ease our overcrowding, but it's going to give the opportunity for families to stay together," she said. "Bonding is important. You can get so much comfort from somebody who is going through the same thing you are." Durham opened its Ronald McDonald House in 1980, the 13th in the nation. There are now more than 200 houses throughout the country.

BY CLAUDIA ASSIS cassis@heraldsun.com Originally published in: The Herald-Sun - Sunday, November 09, 2003 © Copyright 2003 by The Durham Herald Company. - All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.