Helping a Friend

Katie and Henry

It’s been too long since I fired up this blog and shared any news. I hate that the news I have to share today is so sad. My good friend Katie has suffered a devastating loss. Her oldest son, Henry, passed away yesterday following a drug overdose and a serious assault. The whole story of her family’s ordeal can be read in detail from Katie’s own brave words at her blog.

In the meantime, so many of Katie’s friends have asked me and her other co-workers at Ackermann PR what they can do to help. I want to pass along this information on what we are doing here at work and how you can be a part of it.

As if the pain of losing Henry weren’t enough, there are very real financial hurdles to be faced now, as well.

So many people have been asking what they can do to help. There is a simple and direct way to do so and I’m calling on you for assistance. With some coordinated effort in the online community, we can at least try to make one aspect of this horrible time easier to manage for the family and give everyone a sense of having helped in a constructive and real way.

Ackermann PR wants to set up a fund to help defray some of the family’s expenses. On the advice of our company bank, this is the best way to handle it:

Simply write a check made out to Katie Allison Granju.

Mail it to:

Crystal Cardwell
c/o Ackermann PR
1111 Northshore Drive, Suite N-400
Knoxville, TN 37919

We’ll handle it from there and deposit the funds raised into an account for the family.

Please pass this along to everyone you can. Katie has inspired us all with how she has dealt with this tragedy. Let’s see what we can do to help make things just a tiny bit easier for her.

And keep praying for them all as well. I know Katie and her family felt a lot of love and support the past few weeks and believe it helped her.

Thanks,

Shane

About Shane Rhyne

I wear many hats in my personal and professional life. I am a public relations professional, writer, and social media advocate. I blog about topics of interest to me professionally and personally. Connect with me on Google+

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I’ve been negligent in thanking some blogging friends for giving my new blogging project a shout out on their blogs and elsewhere, so allow me to rectify that situation now.

First, thanks to Michael Silence over at the Knoxville News Sentinel where he blogs at No Silence Here (and allows me to contribute as my schedule allows). He included a nice mention of the blog in his Sunday column in the paper’s printed edition earlier this month.

Also, R. Neal– one of East Tennessee’s great bloggers and host of Knoxviews.com, shared nice words about my blog (and Rikki Hall‘s wonderful new blog, too) and even included it in his live-stream in the sidebar.

Michael and R. Neal are two of the leading lights in blogging in East Tennessee (and I’d put them up there with high national rankings, too). In addition to providing me with entertaining reading for several years, they’ve also been actively encouraging me to get back to blogging full time. Of course, this all puts some amount of pressure on me to make sure I work hard to continue to earn their recommendations. Thanks for the support, guys!

About Shane Rhyne

I wear many hats in my personal and professional life. I am a public relations professional, writer, and social media advocate. I blog about topics of interest to me professionally and personally. Connect with me on Google+

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Katie Granju, my co-worker at Ackermann PR, shares her thoughts in the first of a new series of posts on Mamapundit on the role of social media networking as the “new Rotary Club” for local networking.

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About Shane Rhyne

I wear many hats in my personal and professional life. I am a public relations professional, writer, and social media advocate. I blog about topics of interest to me professionally and personally. Connect with me on Google+

Tagged with:
 
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