Miles
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- Mar 18, 2019
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Often the children may not know the names of the players they meet in their hospital room. They may not even be sports fans. It doesn’t really matter. They’re always happy to meet the Broncos who take the time to share a kind word and get to know them.
And, as it happens, the visits tend to leave a lasting impact in the other way, too.
It’ll be hard to forget the brilliant little girl who told them what she’d learned about red blood cells and what they do in the human body.
Or the boy who had the chutzpah to tell three Broncos players that not only were the Patriots his favorite team, but that the Broncos ranked 16th in his ranking of favorite NFL teams.
Or the boy who had drawn mustaches in dry-erase marker on the glass door to his room, so that they would appear on people looking into his room. All three Broncos autographed that door in the same marker.
“It’s just all about trying to give them some type of escape,” Jackson said. “For them, it’s definitely long days, with chemo or whatever that they have to do for that particular day. But to get a visit from guys that you might have seen on TV or if they’re football fans or just if they don’t even know who we are, just to kind of give them [Build-A-Bear] bears or whatever the case may be. That can lift their spirits for the day.”
These trips to the hospital will be a staple in Jackson’s endeavors, but he hopes to bring the extra programs that were main parts of his foundation in Houston, too. Right now, he’s putting together a new foundation board in Colorado, he said, and his goal is to continue doing events similar to those he did previously, like the “Christmas in July” gift-giving program for children at a local hospital.
In the meantime, though, he can work on something a bit simpler, like just getting up to speed on “Fortnite.”