Generosity

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope that you all had a very wonderful Christmas with your loved ones.

We had a great Christmas enjoying beautiful music, food and exchanging some fabulous gifts with each other. However, our Christmas was somewhat darkened by the fact that Katie Stack, my dear friend of over twenty five years, died November 5th. Not only was she a friend to me, but an incredible friend and support to our whole family. Many of you have known that Katie courageously battled breast and bone cancer for over 3 1/2 years. During that time, Anna, Katie’s beloved daughter, quit her job and cared for Katie 24/7 as she fought the cancer. Katie taught us about generosity, living life more fully and appreciating all of life’s blessings. She is fondly remembered and sadly missed.

To make matters worse, several days before Christmas Anna and her long time partner of 15 years, Bryan Thormahlen, lost their home and their beloved dog, Edgar, to a fire that destroyed their home and all their belongings. They lost everything. Some of you may have seen the article in the Missoulian on Tuesday, Dec 22nd. To compound the situation even more, Bryan had been layed off from his job and as money was extremely tight, they were unable to pay their home insurance. As Anna is still grieving deeply, she hadn’t begun to look for a job yet.

Anna and Bryan were making payments to a third party on their trailer and continue to be responsible for those payments. Furthermore, they now have the added burden of paying to clean up and remove the burnt trailer from the landlord’s property. Although they are both hoping to regain employment soon, they are nonetheless still responsible to pay off the trailer and to clean up the mess. They also need to get their lives back on track, find a place to live and replace all their belongings.

If you can help in anyway possible, your support would be greatly appreciated. Ten or twenty dollars or more would be a tremendous help. They are also happy to receive lightly used household goods. They don’t have a place to live yet, but they will be needing furniture once they get an apartment or house.

Anna was a remarkable daughter to Katie, a great support to Bodhi and other disabled folks over the years, and a wonderful friend to our family and many others. She has been through so much and now needs and deserves the support of her family, friends and our community. Whenever someone has been in need, Anna has been there to help. Now is our chance to give back and help her in her time of need.

If you would like to donate, please send checks made out to Anna Stack to me at:

Deanna Johnson

4038 Heritage Way

Missoula, MT 59802

I will bundle all the checks or cash received and make sure Anna gets them. If you are interested in donating any hard goods, please call me at 728-1124 or 544-1549 and we can make arrangements for pick up or drop off. You can also respond by replying to this email. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and for considering making a donation. Any support you can offer would be greatly appreciated by me, and even more so, by Anna and Bryan. Please feel free to pass this email on to others. Thanks.