In the true spirit of holiday giving, the family of Michael Grzankowski, a 5-year-old from Laurence Harbor who has already undergone three open-heart surgeries to repair a severe cardiac defect, wanted to pay forward the kindness of others.
Michael joined his parents, Mike and Jennifer, and his 3-year-old sister, Justina, in conducting a drive which collected hundreds of holiday presents that the family delivered to the Port Reading Fire Department and EMS for a toy drive which coincided with the first responders’ first annual Christmas Tree Lighting Celebration last week.
The presents, to be transported on two ambulances, will be delivered in conjunction with The Marisa Tufaro Foundation to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital (BMSCH) on Friday afternoon.
The delivery of more than 40 boxes of toys will include donations collected during the Marisa Tufaro Classic, a bowling tournament held last month at Majestic Lanes in Hopelawn, which featured girls and boys teams from more than 20 Central Jersey high schools, including host Woodbridge, which sponsored the event.
Amanda Small, the head bowling coach at Woodbridge, and her father, Brian, a councilman at-large in the township who is also president of the Port Reading First Aid Squad, coordinated the tournament and tree lighting celebration as a joint toy drive. The response from the community was overwhelming.
With wife and children in tow, Mike Grzankowski backed his pickup truck, filled with hundreds of toys, into the driveway of the Port Reading Fire Department and EMS, and loaded one of the two ambulances on the premises with the family’s generous donations. The Grzankowskis collected the toys from relatives, friends, coworkers and others.
Michael was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), the same severe congenital cardiac defect with which Marisa Tufaro was born and one that requires a series of three open-heart surgeries to correct.
Michael underwent his first reconstructive operation six days after he was born, had his second repair six months later, and underwent his third open-heart surgery last year at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which pioneered the life-saving intervention.
Earlier this year, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation established a fund at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, from which Marisa received outstanding care for her entire life, to provide financial support to families of pediatric patients from Middlesex County in medical crisis by helping to pay medical, personal or incidental expenses.
Established just over two years ago, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation has already made a profound impact, donating more than $100,000 and spearheading multiple community initiatives to fulfill its mission of helping pediatric patients and other children in need throughout the greater Middlesex County area. The nonprofit has also donated thousands of toys, nonperishable food items, winter jackets, baby supplies and other items upon which it has placed no monetary value.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 960 babies are born annually in the United States with HLHS, a defect in which the left side of the heart, which receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and pumps it to the body, is underdeveloped.
Through a series of reconstructive operations, surgeons are able to redirect the oxygen-rich blood and oxygen-poor blood, enabling the right side of the heart to essentially assume the function of the left side, which is to pump oxygenated blood to the body, and allowing deoxygenated blood to flow from the veins to the lungs without passing through the heart.
Michael has been virtually fearless and remarkably resilient through his three open-heart surgeries and multiple cardiac catheterizations.
Baseball now consumes most of Michael’s life. The sport has led to relationships with the South Amboy High School and Somerset Patriots baseball teams, both of which have embraced the inspirational little boy, and was part of his Make-A-Wish to visit Walt Disney World with his family and play catch with Mickey Mouse.
Michael joined the Somerset Patriots on the field at TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater for the final day of spring training last year, spending time with the players and watching batting practice. The team presented him with autographed game-used bats and a gift bag of Somerset Patriots merchandise, including a red baseball glove. Michael’s image graced the cover of the independent league team’s game program earlier this year.
“Being at such a young age and going through what he had to go through, and what he’s still going through, it touches you,” Somerset Patriots infielder Scott Kelly told MyCentralJersey.com in an interview last year.
“But he came out, and at first he was a little nervous to meet everybody — there are 30 of us, and one of him — but you just see this great kid and you started to see this big smile on his face. He was smiling, happy. It puts things in perspective for everyone. He’s smiling with what he has to go through, and it’s a thousand times harder than anything any of us have to go through on a daily basis. He was a breath of fresh air with his smile, his presence, his personality and just who he was.”
Michael remains a regular visitor to Somerset Patriots and South Amboy baseball games, making the biggest impact on the ballclubs as their smallest “member.”
Marisa Tufaro’s parents, Greg and Cyndi, first met the Grzankowskis when the Greater Middlesex Conference Baseball Coaches Association honored Michael during its annual Senior All-Star Game a year ago.
Our nonprofit is eternally grateful to the Grzankowskis and all who donated toys for pediatric patients this holiday season.