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A Celebration and Fundraiser for Badly Injured Boys

Tallahassee's Post 13 Legion Hall, where Sunday's fundraiser for Juan Pedro and Guillermo is being held.
waymarking.com
Tallahassee's Post 13 Legion Hall, where Sunday's fundraiser for Juan Pedro and Guillermo is being held.

Two little boys, brutalized by their mentally disturbed mother, face what could be years of expensive recovery. Tom Flanigan reports the youngsters’ grandmother hopes for a big community turnout at this Sunday’s fundraiser in Tallahassee.

Tallahassee's Post 13 Legion Hall, where Sunday's fundraiser for Juan Pedro and Guillermo is being held.
Credit waymarking.com
Tallahassee's Post 13 Legion Hall, where Sunday's fundraiser for Juan Pedro and Guillermo is being held.

The grandmother’s name is Gail Brown.

“My youngest daughter Denise was diagnosed with schizo defective mental illness in 2005.”

Brown said Denise went on medication to treat her illness. It seemed she’d be able to live a relatively normal life.

“She got pregnant in 2015. She had married a couple of years before. And she had her first baby. She stopped all medications during her pregnancy because she didn’t want any damage to the infant, because medicines are very toxic to pregnancies.”

Little Juan Pedro was a healthy baby when he was born. But his mother Denise stayed off her meds and was soon in a downward spiral.

“Her husband’s family saw it, but didn’t recognize it. And she never gave any verbal or physical indication that she was a danger to the children or herself.”

Brown said the next events came in quick succession. Denise became pregnant with her second child. Her husband, who was an immigrant, was deported. Then little Guillermo was born, without ever seeing his father. This past April, Denise snapped. Gail Brown got the news in a phone call from a member of her church.

“’There are emergency vehicles outside Denise’s home. Do you know anything?’ I said, ‘No!’ And then a little while later I get a phone call from Jorge Nino, the boys’ father and my daughter’s husband from Mexico. And he said, ‘Denise has hurt the boys.’”

Gail Brown, who works at Tallahassee Memorial, raced to the hospital.

“By the time I got there, the younger one was out of neuro lab and was being brought back to pediatric intensive care. The older one was being prepared for transport to the neuro lab to undergo his procedure. They both were in critical, but extremely stable condition after both their procedures, which floored the ER team, the trauma doc…no one expected them to make it that night.”

Because, said Brown, the traumatic brain injury to both youngsters was massive. Now, months later, the need for serious medical intervention continues. Their assailant, their own mother, is out of the picture, at least for the foreseeable future. The children, especially little Guillermo - now just shy of a year old and the more seriously injured -  face what’s likely to be years of therapy and recovery. And Brown said that means community efforts to generate the resources to make that possible.

“The care and support of these kids has been thrust upon immediate relatives – his sister – who has two teenage children. They were not expecting these two kids to become their financial responsibility. So these funds will be used to help them take care of the boys the best that they can.”

The main event, she said, is this Sunday (7/29) at Tallahassee’s Lake Ella American Legion.

“From 5 p.m. until 8 p.m., we’ll have live music. We’re hoping to have a DJ. We have food and volunteers from friends and church and work. If people cannot attend but want to support, there is a GoFundMe page with ‘Nana’s Boys’ as the title. They can contribute there also and contribute by buying tickets on EventBrite even if they can’t come.”

And, added Brown, it’ll also be a celebration of the so-far miraculous recovery of two extraordinarily brave little boys.

Copyright 2018 WFSU