The Sturge Weber Foundation

The NE Regional Conference was blessed with good weather and a wonderful gathering of SWF families on the weekend of July 24 and 25.

There were 21 families from NY, NJ, CT, MA, RI, PA, DE, IA, LA and NC, for a total of about 60 people. Pam Dejnak and son Cole came from Louisiana, the Ryan family from North Carolina and the Peterson's from Iowa. The Hosburgh's drove from Rhode Island, but they have moved there recently from Australia. Our newest members were the Terrell family from NJ with 4 month old Alyssa.

The Friday night dinner, followed by the dance, served as an informal ice-breaker, although you would never know that most of these families had never met each other.

The afternoon meetings centered on nutrition, estate planning and family dynamics. The office has a handout on nutrition that we would be happy to share. The presentations on estate planning and family dynamics will be included in the next Branching Out, and will be on the website.

Roger Wolfe, a family therapist and SWF member, spoke on his experiences, both professionally and as the dad of Rebecca Wolfe Szorcsik, who joined him after doing a session with the teens.

And while the adults were keeping busy networking and taking notes, the kids were expending their energy in arts and crafts, games, music, tossing a football around with members of the NJ Revolution arena football team, and enjoying a do- it-yourself deep dish ice cream sundae. A small band of local high school volunteers led the activities and served as marvelous role models. Bonnie Ayers' daughter Julie coordinated this group effort.

As one mom said about her experience at the Conference, "This has opened a world to us, a world of knowledge and insight into what kind of help is out there."

 Follow this link to view it. Thanks again to Wayne Ferguson at Video Image Productions for all the hard work!