I know that it’s improper of me to place an entire copyrighted article in my personal blog. I’m hoping that the sharks at the Star Tribune won’t send me a nasty letter ordering me to remove it from this site. Unfortunately, the Star Tribune doesn’t keep their articles archived for public viewing - and this story needs to be remembered.

The truth is, this story is heart-breaking and heart-warming in the same breath.

If you have a tendency to cry at sad stories, then it’s mandatory to have tissue on hand….

Baby Riley David Charles had a lifetime packed with love

Trudi Hahn
Star Tribune

Published Jan. 16, 2003

The family of Riley David Charles lavished him with love.

Relatives and godparents delighted in holding him. They read to him. They took hundreds of pictures of him, almost from the moment he was born.

About 90 minutes after that moment, Riley David Charles released one last breath and died. It was about 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 2.

His parents, Kevin and Laura Charles of Minneapolis, had known since late September that something was terribly wrong. A sonogram and an MRI scan in about the 20th week of pregnancy revealed that Riley’s kidneys had stopped developing at about five weeks. His condition was called bilateral renal agenesis, and because of it his lungs were unlikely to develop.

In fact, the medical people told them, the baby could not live with his condition, also known as Potter’s Sequence. Babies with this condition who are born alive have an average life span of 30 minutes.

The doctors asked the couple: What do you want to do?

They wanted to make memories with their baby, they decided.

Baby already had a nickname: “Noodle,” gender-free and full of fun.

Now that the Charleses knew that their baby was a boy, they gave him a real name: Riley David Charles.

He had already heard the story of “The Velveteen Rabbit,” about a cloth bunny that an angel turns into a living bunny.

As they read to Riley in the womb, the book “just seemed to talk to us,” Kevin said.

The story teaches that love makes you real, Laura said. The depth of that lesson popped out at them when they read it to Riley again with heavy hearts after the diagnosis.

The couple checked into Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis early on New Year’s Day when it was apparent the baby wasn’t going to wait for his Jan. 31 due date. Early on Jan. 2, Riley’s birth was imminent. Kevin barely had time to phone the grandparents before Riley appeared at 6:05 a.m.

Exactly as the couple had asked, Riley was put in Laura’s arms as soon as he was toweled off and fluid had been suctioned from his breathing passages.

But the doctor said he couldn’t feel a pulse in the umbilical cord, and he didn’t think Riley had made it alive.

“Oh, that was the hardest thing to hear,” Laura said.

The couple held their son and cried.

Then the baby hiccuped.

Laura looked at Kevin. Could he do that without being alive?

Then Riley scrunched up his face.

And then he gurgled as he took his first breaths of air.

A stethoscope confirmed a heartbeat. Riley was alive, and Laura and Kevin had their chance to be a family with their firstborn.

Kevin, 27, an information-technology specialist for the University of Minnesota, and Laura, 33, an art teacher in the Spring Lake Park School District, had come to the hospital with suitcases jammed with the stuff of hope. The first item they grabbed was a vial of holy water for a baptism.

A three-page birth plan they had written for their medical team had specified a particular hospital chaplain to perform the baptism, but she wasn’t at work yet. So the couple started a simple sentence from their Catholic faith: “Riley David, we baptize you, in the name of the Father, and. . . . ”

When their strained minds faltered, the doctor joined in: ” . . . and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Faith a factor

Laura’s faith in God had been a big part of her decision to carry the baby to term. She and her husband had struggled with preparing for a birth, memorial service and burial all at the same time. But any doubts about the wisdom of their decision disappeared one day in late October.

Laura had been washing dishes and suddenly felt peace and grace sweep over her, she said.

She sat down and wrote a long paragraph about her feelings.

“This tiny little one has made me see God’s plan for us. That life is not just what we have here on Earth with all the triumphs and tribulations, it goes far beyond that,” she wrote.

“I can’t explain why bad things happen to good people, except to say that maybe we’re meant to look at those atrocities in a different light.”

Shortly after Riley’s birth, people filled the room: both sets of grandparents, his godmother, an aunt. An uncle who was away on vacation called in.

Because Riley had no kidneys, he couldn’t make urine while in the womb. Because he couldn’t make urine, he couldn’t make amniotic fluid (which is mostly urine after the 14th week of development). Because there wasn’t enough amniotic fluid, he was tightly confined in the womb rather than floating in it, and there wasn’t room to move or to practice breathing movements.

His lungs would be too tiny to support life, the couple had been told, and Riley might not be perfectly formed. But the only outward sign of his condition was a missing right thumb.

“His face was peaches and cream,” Laura said, “but his hands were kind of blue.” He didn’t cry; he gurgled.

They wrapped him in a turquoise quilt with a bunny print that they’d been given by a member of the Potter’s Syndrome Support Group, which they had found online.

They knew it would be a comfort, later, to possess something that had touched their baby’s skin.

Loving Riley

Everyone in the room took turns holding Riley.

The room was so quiet that all they could hear was his breathing.

They took turns reading from “The Velveteen Rabbit,” passing the book from hand to hand.

The chaplain arrived and led a naming ceremony as relatives held hands in a circle. Then Kevin settled into a rocking chair with Riley. A few minutes later, when a nurse checked for a heartbeat, she couldn’t find one. Riley was gone.

Kevin brought the baby to Laura, and they held him and cried.

An uncle and the other godparent soon arrived, and relatives held Riley for photographs before they withdrew to allow Laura and Kevin to be alone with their baby.

The couple snipped off a lock of Riley’s hair. They used an ink pad to make handprints and footprints on paper. They made plaster molds and clay molds of his hands and feet.

The nurse weighed and measured him: 3 pounds, 10.8 ounces; 15.5 inches long.

Then his parents bathed and dressed him. It had taken months to find an outfit for the tiny baby they expected.

They looked at him for a long time; they stroked his hair and kissed him some more. They put him in a bassinet so they could try to eat breakfast. They hadn’t slept for two days and two nights.

Finally, they had to let him go. A nurse carried their baby away.

Five days after Riley lived, sunset painted the sky with a rainbow of hues from purple to blue to pink. Laura was sure it was Riley making things beautiful in heaven.

“Kevin saw it and said, ‘Uh-oh, they gave Riley the watercolors.’ ”

. . .

“When I miss him so much I can hardly stand it, I remember the feel of his head on my lips,” Laura Charles wrote days after Riley’s birth. “He was a perfect blend of Kevin and me.”

Kevin & Laura Charles held the tiny hands of their newborn son Riley David Charles.

Kevin & Laura Charles spend precious time with their son Riley David Charles.

. . . .

Riley’s grandfather, Star Tribune photographer Mike Zerby, took these photos.

– Trudi Hahn is at thahn@startribune.com.

© Copyright 2003 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Get the whole story »

Another Christmas day has come and gone. I’m sorry to say that it’s really just like any other day for me, except that I don’t have to work. And I can sit around home all day feeling sorry for myself. It wasn’t always this way….

Before my Mom’s death in 1984, Christmas in our household was a magical, yet fairly low-key event. My family - my Mom, Dad, brother and Aunt Elaine - would celebrate Christmas beginning with attending the Midnight Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Robbinsdale on Christmas Eve.

We would bundle up against the bitterly cold December night, get into the family car and head off to Aunt Elaine’s house. My Dad would check his watch at least a half dozen times before Aunt Elaine was finally settled into the car and off we went to Sacred Heart.

The Midnight Mass actually started at 11:30 pm - with the choir singing traditional Christmas carols. Because of the popularity of the music portion of the mass, the church tended to fill up by 11. The phenomena of “Christmas Catholics” guaranteed a full house. So full, in fact, that the ushers set up folding chairs along the ends of each pew.

The local Knights of Columbus provided their “honor guard” to officiate at the mass. None of the Knights was younger than 50. Promptly at midnight, the Knights filed in through the main church doors, their swords pulled from their sheaths, held upright in front of the faces in a display of great solemnity. In they marched down the aisles, the feather trim on their fancy hats matching the Knight’s steady cadence, the light glistening off the medals hanging on their chests.

To a young child, they were a sight to behold. To the rest of us, our chief concern was that one of them might trip and impale himself on his sword or suffer a heart attack while standing at attention for the long service.

My family always sat in the vestibule where the Nativity scene was displayed, the five of us strategically spaced to fill up the pew. The figures in the creche were almost life size, their detail splendid. The Priest, accompanied by the highest ranking Knights, carried the Baby Jesus to the creche with great pomp and circumstance, while the choir and the congregation sang “Silent Night”, the soprano soloist ensuring that the congregation was wide awake. Once the Baby Jesus was carefully wrapped in his blanket and placed securely in the small crib between the adoring Mary and Joseph, the Knights would escort the Priest to the alter and mass would begin in earnest.

The homily, following the dictum of the Vatican, always forced me to apply various methods to keep my eyes open. I tried every trick in the book to ensure that I wouldn’t doze off - biting my tongue, biting my lip, counting the number of tile panels in the vesitbule ceiling, digging my nails into the palm of my hand, pinching the skin between my forefinger and thumb. The task was made more difficult by the fact that the parents with the young children allowed them to fall asleep - often going so far as to remove their coats and create an inviting nest for them to slumber in - better to have them sleeping than fidgeting.

The music, while certainly not rivaling the Morman Tabernacle Choir, was the high point of the mass (some might say that this isn’t saying much). The Choir Master, a stout man of German descent, reveled in the power that he held over the Priest, Church Council and choir members. Years later, at a time when a top-of-the-line digital keyboard could easily produce the rich sound of a traditional pipe organ (at easily a fraction of the cost of a hand-made, imported pipe organ), the choir master insisted that an authentic pipe organ be ordered. He threatened to abandon the choral program if his demand wasn’t met. The debate that ensued between the Priest, choir master and church council often reached vitriolic proportions, however Herr Choir Master eventually won out. The new organ was installed over the period of a year and a half. And it looks grandly out of place….

After mass ended, we’d bring Aunt Elaine home. Some years we’d stay for coffee, milk and cookies. Other years, with sleep beckoning, we would go home.

I learned in 1970, while attending a showing of the movie “Patton” at the old Terrace Theater with my parents, that Santa Claus was someone only little kids believe in. I was seven when I asked my Mom, in a quiet moment between battle scenes, if Santa was “real”. She tried to worm her way out of answering my question, finally whispering, “Are you SURE you want to know the truth?” I assured her that I was - thanks to one of my classmates at Edward D. Neill Elementary School who felt it his responsibility to destroy the joy of Christmas for a group of us that had the unfortunate luck of sharing a table with him at lunch.

Sure of my desire to know the truth, she told me….

I was crushed.

I’ve also never been able to watch “Patton” since.

This also worked to my parents advantage - since I no longer felt the excited rush to be up at the break of dawn to see what wonderful gifts Santa had brought me.

Christmas Day in our household usually consisted of opening the gifts, followed by a quick call to Aunt Elaine to thank her for her nice gifts, then my Mom would make a nice breakfast. Shortly after breakfast, she would begin the process of preparing our afternoon dinner, readying the turkey for the oven. I was assigned the same task year after year - dust and polish the dinning room table, set the table (with the “good” china, silverware, cups/saucers and wine glasses), make up the “relish dish” (which contained pickle spears - both Dill and Sweet Pickle Baby Dills, black and green olives, radishes and celery sticks). I took great pride in assembling this dish. (I was young, after all.)

Aunt Elaine would arrive promptly at the pre-agreed upon time (usually 3pm), driving up in “Tilly”, her 1966 powder blue Chevrolet Chevelle. (OK, so it wasn’t nearly as COOL as THIS one, but YOU try to find a picture of a 4-door powder blue Chevy Chevelle!) Why couldn’t she have bought one of THESE?!?

Dinner was always a success, my Mom’s love for her family reflected in the care and preparation of the annual feast.

After dinner, nearly comatose, we would gather around the kitchen table to play Scrabble or a card game called “Cheat Your Neighbor” (the irony not lost on our family).

My Mom was the heart and soul of our family. Christmas celebrations after her death were somber occasions, marked most notably by her absence.

After my Dad died in 1994 and Aunt Elaine developed Alzheimer’s Disease (and moved in to a nursing home), the significance of Christmas in our household diminished. Some years we have a tree (this is a pro-tree year). The exterior of the house and the front yard, however, are very nicely decorated (thanks to Kevin) every year.

Feasts and gifts are still fine things, but the faces around the table count far more.

I know that I’m not alone in admitting that I’m actually happy when the holiday season is over. Don’t misunderstand me - I am truly thankful for the love of my brother, my cats and dogs and my friends. It’s just that my gratitude isn’t limited to a single day of the year.

Now, I just have to get through the NEW YEAR….

The Star Tribune ran a story today that recounted the horror of the torpedoing of the S.S. Leopoldville by a German U-boat on Christmas Eve 1944.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 24, 1944, more than 2,200 troops from the 262nd and 264th regiments were called to emergency duty in the Battle of the Bulge — the largest land battle of World War II, a battle that would ultimately decide the fate of Nazi Germany.

Carrying the combat infantry outfits of the 66th Division, the former luxury liner pulled out of the harbor in Southampton, England seven hours later. The dreary, cold weather, fueled by the holidays away from loved ones and cramped conditions within the former luxury liner all combined to leave the military men in a somber mood.

Without warning, shortly after 6 pm, the German U-boat fired a lone torpedo with precise and deadly accuracy, striking the bottom stern of the ship, ripping a huge hole in the hull.

According to Henry (Hank) Andersen, a former sergeant on board that fated vessel, hundreds of men were blown apart; while hundreds more drowned after being sucked under the ship as it lost its battle to stay afloat, or froze in the icy waters of the English Channel. When the final toll was tallied, more than 800 souls were lost — the worst disaster to befall an American infantry division as a result of an enemy submarine attack.

Survivors were taken to the Cherbourg maritime station. It was there that the meaning of Christmas came through.

Former Sergeant Anderson recalled:

Black quartermaster troops stationed in Cherbourg and segregated from white troops, offered survivors their Christmas dinner. Andersen, too grief-stricken to think of eating, didn’t want to go, but an order was an order. Soon, 2 1/2-ton trucks came to pick up the men and take them to the black troops’ stationing area.

“As we lined up for their dinner, gradually the entire quartermaster outfit surrounded us and began singing Christmas carols, gently, softly, magnificently.”

A strange and profound feeling swept over him. “In sorrow and wonder,” said Andersen, his voice breaking, “we began to sing with them.”

The music, he said, gave him sustenance to go on, something to believe in.

“Health. Hope. Comfort. Peace. When I left that place, I was healed.”

This gesture by their fellow soldiers was heartwarming, compassionate and made no distinction of the differences that so clearly divided the men in 1944.

This is something to think about just a few days before Christmas.

May God bless and keep safe the brave men and women who are fighting for our continued freedom in the War Against Terrorism.

Merry Christmas - and thank you - from a proud and grateful American.

One-sixth of the town of Cass Lake, MN turned out today to bid a tearful farewell to Louie Bisson, a local resident who was beaten to death by two teens in a senseless act of violence.

Legally blind since birth - most likely a result of the same gene that caused him to lack skin pigment (albinoism) - Louie struggled to lead a productive life - but he never quit trying. “He had far greater insight into love and human caring than many people ever will,” His sister, Pam Parmenter wrote. “We will miss you, Lou. Love, your family.”

I have difficulty understanding how two young boys could be that hate-filled or disrespectful of life.