BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[stewart]](/editions/1998/12/06/bike_120x180.jpg)
Sean Stewart rides his adaptive bicycle with help from teacher Janice Cubbison.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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Sean Stewart can't express the joy he feels riding his adaptive bicycle, but the expression on the 17-year-old Bridgetown boy's face tells all.
"He just loves riding it," said his mother, Terri Stewart. "It gives him something else to do. Instead of being in a chair, he's riding a bike like everybody else."
Sean, who has cerebral palsy, is one of hundreds really?? of Tristate residents who benefited from the 1997 Wish List, an annual project of the Enquirer that is administered by the United Way. Last year, the Wish List collected $142,929.44 from 1,810 donors and countless donations of goods and services. That adds up to $1,512,432. donated over the last 12 years.
The 13th Annual Wish List drive begins today.
Besides the adaptive bicycle, Sean received wheelchair repairs and braces, with help from Wish List money and Marmer Orthotic in Clifton. The braces have enabled him to walk better with his walker.
First- and second-graders from St. Joseph Catholic School in Crescent Springs raised $470.47 and gave Sean him gift certificates to buy CDs of his favorite heavy metal bands. Sean, now a senior at Margaret
B. Rost School in Bridgetown, and his mother visited the school last December.
"He had a really good time," Mrs. Stewart said. "He understands a lot, but he can't tell you verbally. You could tell by his expressions how excited he was, and the kids could see it, too."
Mrs. Stewart plans to send the students a Christmas card with a picture of Sean riding his bicycle. During the winter, she takes the bicycle to his school so he can use it there.
"Thank everybody for me," Mrs. Stewart said. "I just appreciate everything everybody has done for us. People in this city are really good."
Sean, of course, isn't the only 1997 Wish List recipient whose life has changed. Among the others:
Jackie Isaacs used to spend about least two hours a day hauling water from the kitchen sink to the bathroom so her family could bathe and flush the toilet. She'd bail water out of her clogged kitchen sink after finishing dishes.
Thanks to Aztec Plumbing in Batavia, bathing and doing dishes are no longer back-breaking work for the 43-year-old Anderson Township woman and her four children, ages 15, 14, 13 and 11.
"It's made life a lot easier," said Mrs. Isaacs, who works in the Meijer bakery. "It's eliminated a couple of hours at night or in the morning. I go to work at 5 a.m. I wouldn't have been able to do all that."
Jerry Blanchard, owner of Aztec Plumbing, helps one family each holiday. "We just saw it in the paper and thought we could help the people out. I went down and looked at it. It was a disaster."
Volunteer plumbers and handymen put in two new toilets, fixed the kitchen and bathroom sinks, put on a new shower head, laid new carpet in the kitchen and a new floor by the back door. Mr. Blanchard said he didn't keep track of the cost of the project.
"I go to work, I've got this big mess," Mrs. Isaacs said. "I come home, and it's gone."
Beryl Potter, a Cincinnati senior citizen with multiple sclerosis, got her wish for a lift that helps her move from her bed to her scooter. "Is that not wonderful?" Mrs. Potter said as she landed comfortably. The device has enabled her to stay in her home of 28 years.
"It's so much easier," Mrs. Potter said. "I can't begin to tell you. I'm really grateful to the Wish List and all those involved." When the Multiple Sclerosis Society approached her about the Wish List, she had a negative reaction -- pride. Becky Wiehe of the MS Society reminded her of the goodness of people, and Mrs. Potter realized the importance of accepting this gift.
"Each day, as I use this apparatus, I know how fortunate I was to receive this mechanical marvel," she wrote in a thank-you letter in August to The Enquirer. "I've come to appreciate the difference it has made in my life."
Barbara Hain, blind since her birth 62 years ago, is reading her own mail these days, with help from the machine she wished for a year ago.
When she places papers and books face down on the machine, it scans the pages and a synthesizer voices the words automatically. Before, she said, she learned the identity and contents of bills and letters in her College Hill mailbox when friends and relatives read them to her. She appreciated their kindness, but wished she could learn about her mail when she retrieved it -- and in private. Her only complaint now? It's frustrating, she said, when companies and individuals combine dark type on dark-colored paper stock, which often makes it impossible for the machine to read.
Alberta Scott, 55, of Evanston, received new dentures, which were needed because of severe gum disease.
Before he pulled her teeth, an oral surgeon discovered Mrs. Scott suffered from hypertension. She took medication to lower her blood pressure, and then the surgeon pulled 17
teeth and built new dentures.
"She's doing fine," says Sister Joanne Mary Braeunig of the Sisters of Mercy H.O.M.E. Program.
Three-year-old Kristina Johnson of Alexandria got all of the computer equipment she needed to help her communicate with her parents and three sisters.
Kristina, deaf since birth, uses her computer to help her recognize words and develop her speech. ComputerPeople in Symmes Township donated the computer. Software and a laptop were purchased with Wish List money.
Chuck Martin and Mike Pulfer contributed to this report.
![[stewart]](/editions/1998/12/06/bike_366x550.jpg)