Swimming with dolphins, meeting Justin Bieber and spending a day with Navy SEALs: The Make-A-Wish team makes dreams like this possible for hundreds of children facing life-threatening medical conditions in Pennsylvania every year. Here’s more about three of those wishes from Berks County. Josh became a chef for the day. Nathanael met Spider-Man at Disney World. And Joyce became a Marine.
Cooking Up a Surprise
Josh Fronheiser has a special heart.
When he was born, he was pink and perfect, mom Beth Fronheiser says, but doctors soon noticed a heart murmur. Baby Josh was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease, and by the time he turned 4 he had three surgeries. With just two of the four chambers of his heart working, Josh would get winded walking to the mailbox at his Rockland Township home.
These days, his colds might last a little longer and his hands might always be chilly, but Josh is an 8-year-old healthy enough to play baseball and compete in the Brandywine Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby.
Josh has been through a lot, though, and the Fronheisers wanted him to have his dream come true. “He’s been through hell. There’s no other way to put it,” Beth says. “We have as a family, but everything’s all been on him.”
So, in December, he went to New York City to become a chef for the day.
Josh has shown his love of cooking with his pretend grill, the cooking shows he watches with his family and the cooking classes he’s taken. This trip, however, was a world beyond chopping vegetables for Taco Tuesday dinners.
Plans were in the works for Josh to cook with a chef in a local restaurant. Then, Make-A-Wish shared an opportunity for something much bigger. The catch? The Fronheisers had just days to prepare. Ken, a salesman, and Beth, a utility project manager, made arrangements and said, “Yes!” They kept the details secret from Josh and his brother, Nathaniel, 11.
Early one December morning, they went to Red Rooster, a Harlem restaurant specializing in comfort food. Chef Marcus Samuelsson helped the boys make pasta Bolognese.
Then they were off to tour the Baked by Melissa cupcake factory and ice cupcakes with Melissa Ben-Ishay.
The next stop was Café Boulud, a restaurant with French cuisine and a Michelin star. The boys rolled and filled chocolate truffles with pastry chef Ashley Brauze and made madeleines: tiny, shell-shaped cakes powdered with sugar.
Josh joined the staff’s pre-dinner meeting and then sat down for a meal with his family. When dinner was finished, Josh got up for the final course.
“He got to go back to the kitchen, make a fresh batch of madeleines and bring them out to us with dessert. He got to serve us what he made, which was pretty cool,” Beth says. “He was very proud. They were fantastic.”
Throughout the day, a camera crew with Good Morning America followed chef Josh. The next day, the Fronheisers toured the set of the show. A video about Josh’s big day aired later. Back at the hotel, a chef arranged for the family to tour the International Culinary Institute and meet students there.
The family’s still speechless over the whirlwind trip, the generosity and the food.
“We never would have been able to have him do something like this on our own,” Beth says. “With everything that he’s been through, we got to do this awesome, awesome thing.”
Now when Josh goes to a cooking class, he wears his chef’s coat signed by each chef he met that day. He’s also more interested in helping make dinner at home and put to use one of the tips the chefs shared. “Put cheese on top,” he says.
A Super Trip
When Nathanael Davenport’s wish granters first asked what he wanted more than anything in the world, the 6-year-old quickly asked to have his face painted.
“We can do that, but we can make it way, way bigger,” they said.
So, this Spider-Man fan went to Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. The trip was a bright spot after a tough treatment for rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer that attacks muscle tissue, and a positive experience for Nathanael, his fraternal twin Noah, 9-year-old sister Abigail and their parents, Josh and Christen Davenport.
“All of them, they just needed something really positive to happen because this had been a lot of not-so-great stuff for a really long time,” Christen says. “It was almost like we could show them: see, good stuff can happen again.”
They noticed something was wrong two years ago, when Nathanael’s left eyelid started to swell. He was treated for allergies and tried different medications before he was sent to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for surgery, where doctors found and removed a cancerous tumor.
Then, Nathanael went through weekly chemotherapy for four months and daily radiation. The treatment was rough for him and the whole family.
The Davenports, who live in Colebrookdale Township, had support from family, friends, their church and co-workers. Josh is an autistic support teacher in Governor Mifflin School District and Christen is an English teacher at Downingtown’s STEM Academy.
Nathanael has since bounced back and is one year into remission.
His oncologist suggested treating Nathanael to a wish, so the family signed up when he was healing.
The Davenports went to Orlando during their 2017 winter break. In each park, genie passes were their golden tickets, whisking them to the front of every line. Nathanael, Noah and Abigail were picked for special activities, too. They were junior directors in Indiana Jones’ Stunt Spectacular. They went on stage at Enchanted Tales with Belle and met Optimus Prime at Universal Studios.
They were looking forward to a meet-and-greet at the movie theme park, where they expected to meet Spider-Man.
“They had Spider-Man and they had all of the X-Men and Captain America,” Christen says. “They got to meet all of these people.”
The superheroes signed Nathanael’s Make-A-Wish shirt and taught the kids some tricks.
“He didn’t just see Spider-Man, but he got to talk to him and he showed him how to throw a web,” she says. “That was fantastic.”
The family spent the rest of their week at the different Disney parks and celebrated Christmas at the Magic Kingdom. Their wish-granters took care of every last detail, allowing them to relax, have fun and enjoy their adventure.
“That feeling of being unburdened was incredible for us,” Christen says. “The whole family felt great when we came back. We felt energized and close together. We had a great time together with no worries.”
And to top it off, Nathanael got his face painted. Abigail became an ice queen. Noah was a dragon, and Nathanael transformed into a tiger.
A Commanding Presence
Joyce Ortiz has dreamed of being a Marine since eighth grade. She remembers watching retired Marines come to school to help students in Reading School District’s ROTC program.
However, a cancer diagnosis prevented her from joining the ROTC.
Through Make-A-Wish, Joyce, now 16, was able to be a Marine for a few days in November when she went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The trip meant a lot to Joyce, and it’s solidified her decision to become a Marine when the time’s right, says her mother, Giselle Arman.
Joyce was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a type of cancer with tumors that grow in muscles or bones. For Joyce, the cancer has caused a lot of pain and swelling in her right calf, making it difficult to walk. The cancer was aggressive, and her medical team called for aggressive treatment to fight back, Giselle says. Joyce went through a year of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation.
Joyce’s caseworker at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center suggested she join Make-A-Wish. Her family agreed because the cancer was aggressive and they were expecting the worst, Giselle admits.
Today, Joyce walks with a limp and her right leg is weak, but she’s strong enough to be back at Reading High, where she’s a sophomore.
In November, Giselle and Joyce, along with her daughters Gisellys Gonzalez, 9; Ginellys Gonzalez, 3; and Joycenellys Gonzalez, 7 months; and her boyfriend Ervin Gonzalez, went to Camp Lejeune, one of the largest Marine Corps bases in the country.
“The trip was very exciting,” Giselle says. “They treated her like their own and they could not have made her trip any more exciting.”
Joyce got her own Marine Corps uniform and saw demonstrations of the Marines’ military working dogs. These dogs go through extensive training to find explosives or drugs by smell. They also can be trained to do things like apprehend suspects.
The teen also met a color guard, saw a Humvee simulator, sat in an attack helicopter and was able to talk to Marines at many levels, up to the camp commander.
She was also able to attend a celebration for the 242nd birthday of the Marine Corps.The ceremony was filled with pomp and circumstance and ended with the oldest attending Marine passing a piece of cake to the youngest Marine present.
Joyce’s highlights were working with the military dogs and riding in a real tank, an M1A1 Abrams tank, she says.
Now that she’s back home, she’s back to playing games on her Xbox and riding her hoverboard.
And her goal to join the Marines after graduation is even stronger after her trip of a lifetime.
Why the Marines? “They’re the best branch of the military,” she says.
