07/10/2020
Grant A Wish yard improvements...
Grant A Wish, Inc
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- United States
- Chicago, IL
- Grant A Wish, Inc
(4)
Address
1136 E 93rd St
Chicago, IL
60619
General information
Grant A Wish, Inc is a not for profit, tax exempt, 501 (c)(3) organization that grants wishes to needy, disabled and abused children, since 1981. We operate a Wish, Baby, School, Food and Annual Holiday Gift Program.
Opening Hours
| Monday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Tuesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Friday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Saturday | 09:00 - 05:00 |
| Sunday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
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A Message from Vital Thomas, President of Grant A Wish.
The founder of Grant A Wish, Inc Ms. Anne Blair was a dynamic inspirational African American woman, who had a big heart and always wanted to help those less fortunate. She worked with other organizations and groups to help champion causes to help the downtrodden and the poor people who just needed a helping hand. My name is Vital Thomas and Ms. Anne Blair was my mother founder of Grant A Wish. They say that the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree. My mother was an inspiration to me to do what I am continuing in her memory & honor the mission of Grant A Wish, Inc. We all can and should try to make a difference to change the conditions facing our collective communities. A neighborhood or city is only as good as its residents, it is the mentality of the people that will make things better or worse to live any place.
My mother made her transition to the spirit world in May of 2010. It was hard to see things end for her when things got bad, she wanted to know before she was to face death, who was going to carry on her mission and I guess I was selected to do the job. The bible says honor thy mother & father and I think it also has to do with having the will, the drive and the guts to carry on someone else's dream, but in a way I wanted to make a difference to give. I loved my mother and I know the sacrifice she made for so many including me and my three brothers. She knew early in life, when she was born on August 20, 1935 and lived in the black metropolis (Bronzeville), that people needed each other to survive the harsh winters, the poorest of conditions to those who had a hard time during trying times.
Many times, what happens to you in life is measured by the deeds you are driven to achieve, when you watch people die or have very little to feed their families or people just never having enough. The black community in those days had no choice but to fend for themselves against the racist elements in Chicago at that time which made it difficult for black people to go where they were not welcomed, so BronzeVille was home. Some people that couldn’t pay their rent the whole community would support a rent party so they wouldn’t be homeless, your kids couldn’t eat there was 10 houses you could go to that had food and welcomed your kids in to eat. The love and the hate was always available, but there was a code amongst the gangsters, pimps, hustlers, policy kings, businessman, and power of the inventiveness of black people who knew that they had to look out for each other. There are countless story from family trees of the history of black families and what their ancestors had to endure under the circumstances during those times.
Rich people always had more than they needed and Chicago has a rich history of blood, sweat and tears and the sufferings of the poor. My mother witnessed the love and the hate, but the hate is what you have to watch closely. My mother had Jewish friends, Irish friends, Italian friends, & immigrants and she had people who looked out for her and maybe God knew her heart. She had people put in her life who could help her instead of hurt her. My mother worked for Channel 2 CBS, back it the day, she gravitated to media work to expose the conditions facing poor kids, she was a columnist, she worked for newspapers and she was got involved with the political establishment and she had connections with anybody and everybody who at the time was also putting up the good fight. She was involved with a variety of groups that supported black causes and that fought against the injustices with housing, jobs, political black power and Vietnam war, where black men were drafted to fight and the birth of the civil rights movement. The black panther party, the nation of Islam and those who wouldn’t want to sit in the back of any bus, the freedom riders and trials & tribulations of the times.
Ms. Anne Blair was a powerhouse and she was a person who had love in her heart to help you instead of hurting you, she worked with the Pro & Con Screening Board founded in 1976 to fight the detrimental impact that movies and television had on minorities. It was determined in a study conducted, that especially African American children or people of colored where psychological influences by what they saw at the movie theatre or on television. Because of the conditioning of the history of 400 years of slavery, it was also determined that people who never had experience these things before or where kept in the dark through a lack of education and gravitated to anything with familiarity. So, when black people saw themselves at the movie theatre or on television they were influenced by white director, writer and producers to pegs as stupid, lazy, over sexed and on & on to paint a negative image of the women & black men as rapist etc to white woman & society. When the blaxploitation movies came out to the theatres beginning in 1972 with Superfly & black thirsting to see people like them in movies they flocked to the theatres to see Richard Pryor, black role models but were tainted with negative roles and therefore influencing the behavior of certain groups of black people. Ms. Anne Blair fought against these images through the Pro & Con Screening Board and she became a Chicago film critic associating with black actors & actresses and white film critics like Roger Ebert & Gene Siskel and others. I had the fortunate opportunity to be invited to sit in many of these screening of hundreds of films over the years.
As time moved on and Bill Cosby and other black entertainers began to change the face of these images on television and in the movies like Spike Lee and others. Oprah Winfrey and so many others today who are making it known that black is business and we will no longer stand for black people being betrayed always as criminals or always living in squalor and never having any intellectual superiority. There is so much to be said about Ms. Anne Blair and what she had to face as a young girl, young lady and a woman with a family. My mother earned her stripes and she worked with so many high powered. Mayor Richard M Daley & his wife Maggie Daley was a friend to my mother as well as political powerhouses, including Mayor Jane Byrne, Mayor Harold Washington, Mayor Eugene Sawyer and others. My mother as a film critic had the fortunate opportunity to meet hundreds of the entertainment industries biggest talents. I have a large inventory of autographs to her from some of the tops talents of today & yesterday that cared about her.
Grant A Wish, Inc was started in 1981 out of the love for people and for working to grant wishes to needy, disabled and abused kids that would never see a nice Christmas or other things like a new pair of shoes, or coat, or whatever and she worked hard to grant those wishes and I am working hard to do more and to continue her mission. To God all the glory and together we can and must work to continue to make a difference to improve the conditions in our communities.
