02/24/2016
It is with some sorrow, and also a great amount of joy, that I am delivering this message. As I sat down to write this on several previous occasions I was unable, or perhaps not quite willing, to pull the curtain as it were, and stop what we have built for the last six years.
I announce with excitement and some remorse, the closing of the Simply Soda Children’s Foundation after six years. It is time for we who have served to go separate ways, and grow in new directions. We have been honored to serve in this community, as a small part of it, and to take your offerings to those in need, in your names, as one foundation for the benefit of others in need.
We have reached out to and supported many families through these years and have accomplished much. It has been one of the greatest triumphs in our lives. We have been touched by so many, and given breath for those in need from those who wish only to serve. We have submitted to the needs of the foundation as it was laid out from its inception, and turned the reigns over to the founders of Sodafest, where our original commitment, and theirs, will live on in a new form. It is with great satisfaction that we relinquish the helm and watch as this new organization continues to reach sick and injured children in new and creative ways, as it was our plan from the moment we began.
When my wife, Andrea, created the idea for the Simply Soda Children’s Foundation she wanted to address the needs of children and their parents in our community that did not have the support and foundation we had when our son, Soda Pop, was injured in an automobile accident in 2010. She felt a deep need to reach out to these people. There are so many out there, around the corner from where we live, eat, work, and play. How could we accept so much from our community while others saw so little?
Andi decided we should do something more than talk about it. We came up with what we hoped would be a solution. We rolled many ideas around during those long nights working through feeding tubes and re-potty training our son. We would wake up to the alarm on his feeding tube machine going off at 3am, soaked to the mattress in formula from a jammed apparatus or hose. The formula would soak the entire bed because we had been in a near comatic sleep from the long days spent driving hundreds of miles to find that one more treatment that might help him hold his head up, swallow, move his left side, or even say “Dada, Mama” again.
It was in those hours that she formed the words for the first time. She sent me a text message the next day that said, “How about ‘Simply Soda’?” I liked it. We moved forward with our plan. We would establish an organization and after five years, we would hand control to the next in line to run it for the same period of time, all while giving the community a direction in which to give and a foundation through which to serve those nearest them in need.
The plan was to start a not-for-profit that could administer aid, cash first, to families in need right here in our community, right now, when they needed it the most. We decided to build it as we had built our other companies, one brick at a time, through trial and error, and with no expectations of winning or losing, but simply of helping however we could, whomever we could. We would call to arms our entire community, gather the guards as it were, and form the SSCF army. We could march into the community strong holds and ask for help. It would work!
As it happened, I was applying a standing seam roof to an attorney’s home in Frankfort, IN and struck up a conversation with him about our newly stated mission. He was a fan of President Jimmy Carter, as was I, and we found lots of things in common in the field of our humanitarian direction for our lives. I worked out a deal wherein I would deduct a portion of my billing statement for his roof if he would complete all necessary forms and applications to become a 501 C 3 Not-for-profit organization. Once official, we moved forward like a tidal wave, speaking to anyone who would have ears to hear.
We gathered people we knew from school, sports, work, and social media and had our first meeting at our little country home one afternoon. We discussed the scope of our work, how we would need officers, minutes, records, and all the rest of the components that make up a business, but without payment to anyone save the families we wished to help. We had no idea how to find those families, so we put the word out and immediately I became the meet and greet ambassador for the organization.
It has been one of my greatest joys, and singly as difficult as anything I have undertaken in my life, to have been this small part of the larger organization. I was often thought to be the driving force behind this endeavor, but truth be told, I only bathed in the limelight while others did the hard work and committed to the tasks that it takes to actually make something like this run. Those people remain still mostly anonymous today per their requests.
Our plan was to build this into a monster as we had our other businesses, and like our other organizations, after planting and seeds sprouted, find others to tend the garden and continue to help it grow. We found the beginnings of that a little over a year into the tilling.
We tried several varieties of fund raisers. Runs, jogs, races, haunted houses, t shirts, stickers, trinkets, bake sales, and begging. All equipped us to take on more families and support their needs to get to and from the therapies, hospitals, appointments, and associated needs for their children’s recovery processes. But we were still short of what we could label our flagship event until an old neighbor I had not seen in many moons called me one night.
I met with Troy some days later in his recording studio in his basement. He held his hands in the air and formed an arch and uttered the words, “Sodafest!” He explained to me that he wanted to help, and that the way for him to use his talent was to do something with his band. Why not have a festival of sorts, and give all of the money to sick and injured children right here, right now? I instantly loved the idea and meetings ensued.
It has been six years and we have seen many children come and go in this theater of life. We have received letters from families grateful for the services our community allowed us to present them, and requested to be allowed to help now that their children were no longer in need. We have stood beside families, representing all of the people that support this foundation, as their children continued to struggle, and ultimately fought to win. We have also faced the hallowed graves, and watched these families submit their children to the Earth, reminding us of just how important our work was and is.
It is not without great anguish that we experience love. That which we hold most dear holds the key, also, to our greatest sorrows. A thing not of this world remains far from our understanding; nothing holds it back nor keep us from its grasp. This truth remains even against our deepest pleas and our strongest desires. Our greatest service is to hold tight and warm the hands we hold in those moments before the last wind carries us to our final path, where we all must go. Where they go no one can accompany them, but that path all shall one day know. And against this thrall always love remains. It washes us clean and invigorates our emptiness. It builds our bodies, and strengthens our minds. It refreshes our souls.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Kindness its perfect expression.
Above all, be kind.
Thank You,
Chad, Andi, and Soda Pop
