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THE SUNDAY EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE | MAY 14, 2017
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Mesa woman makes wish on balloon come true for girl BY MELODY BIRKETT Tribune Contributor
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Mesa woman and her sister helped make true a wish that a 12-year-old girl had put on a balloon that traveled miles away from her Phoenix home. Vanessa Gonzalez had written a wish for the complete series of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” books on a balloon before she inflated it and sent it into the air on March 22. The balloon landed 20 miles away in Mesa a week later in the backyard of Barbara Mattingly, who was on the phone with her sister in Ahwatukee, Kathy Schumacher, when it landed. “My dogs started to bark so I had to hang up. They were frightened, you could tell, because they were looking at something by my feet and barking and backing up,” Mattingly said. “I looked down and there’s a balloon at my feet.” Mattingly first thought it was an advertisement but then called her sister back and read the balloon message. Mattingly had never heard of the books, so Schumacher looked them up on her iPad. “We were bickering over who was going to buy the books,” Mattingly said.
“She had it up so she ordered them and we just split the cost.” Days later, Schumacher received a notice that books were undeliverable because the address on the balloon was incomplete. She found a phone number and reached Vanessa’s dad to confirm the address. He said to Schumacher, “You’re kidding me. You got that balloon?” Schumacher said, “He just went crazy.” After Vanessa received the books, she left a message on Schumacher’s phone, thanking her. “It wasn’t like a toy or something. It was books and we just thought how awesome for a child … to want books,” Schumacher said. Vanessa still had another wish, and that one came true, too. She wanted to meet the sisters who bought her the books. So, recently she met them at the library near downtown Phoenix. When Vanessa walked in, Mattingly said she felt “pure joy. I had a lump in my throat.” Vanessa felt the same way, saying, “When I walked in, I wanted to yell.” The sisters gave her the somewhat deflated balloon in a box colored in pink – Vanessa’s favorite color.
(Melody Birkett/Tribune Contributor)
Flanking Vanessa Gonzalez are Barb Mattingly of Mesa, left, and her sister Kathy Schumacher of Ahwatukee. In the box is the original balloon with Vanessa’s wish.
“I thought that nobody would actually buy me the books, but now I see there is kindness in this world,” Vanessa said. The sisters said they didn’t do this for the attention but just wanted to do something nice. “If you can make a child feel good, just do it,” Mattingly said. Vanessa gave the sisters a letter from
her teacher. “Dear Barb and Kathy,” it read. “This is Vanessa’s teacher and I thought you would like to know that you could not have done such a wonderful thing for a more deserving student. Vanessa is top of her class. Your generosity landed exactly where it should be. This teacher can’t thank you enough.”
East Valley mom and son veterans graduate together as engineers BY DAVID M. BROWN Tribune Contributor
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ike mother, like son. Mesa resident Barb Blanchard and her son, Rodney Buller, who lives in Gilbert, followed that path to degrees last week from Arizona State University. Both earned degrees from ASU’s Ira Fulton Schools of Engineering and, as military veterans, attended the seventh year of the university’s Veterans Honor Stole Ceremony on May 6. They were among the approximately 215 students who participated in the ceremony, first held at the university in 2011 with just 10 students.
Tempe City Council member and Army veteran Robin ArredondoSavage keynoted the event, which honored all 650 ASU student-veterans graduating this spring. Blanchard and Buller received stoles emblazoned with the branch of military service in which they served. They wore them over their academic regalia during graduation ceremonies, which took place last week. “The Stole Ceremony acknowledges and honors my service to my country,” said Blanchard, a native of Delaware. “I have worked hard for, and a long time for, my degree, and I have finally achieved my goal,” she added, explaining that she has attended
other colleges and universities since 1982. “This is my dream come true.” Buller, her older son, added, “The ceremony is an opportunity to join my fellow veterans in collecting our stoles and being able to say our farewells as we move onto the next chapter of our lives.” When Blanchard enrolled at ASU in 2015, she didn’t know that she and her son would be attending the same school at ASU on the same campus. She entered as a graduate of the Associate of Science Program at Phoenix College; he came to ASU as a (Charlie Leight/ASU) sophomore immediately after serving Retired Air Force Sgt. Barbara Blanchard of Mesa and her See
GRADUATES on page 14
son, retired Marine Corps Sgt. Rodney Buller of Gilbert, graduated together from Arizona State University.