Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Prospect Ward produced over 1500 origami paper cranes as a get well wish. The project was headed up by young women wanting to help eighteen-year old Roseanne May of Kangaroo Island who had a bone marrow transplant to combat leukemia.
"My mum told me the story of Sadako and the thousand paper cranes, so we decided to make cranes for Roseanne,'' Georgia Wilson, age thirteen, recalls. "The story says that someone who makes 1000 paper cranes will get one wish, and we wanted to give her that wish."
The paper folding spread to the whole ward. Making an origami crane is no easy thing, but people were driven by love and caring. Enough cranes were made to more than cover Roseanna's wish, according to the Japanese legend. The cheer and good will from the colorful birds was no small thing for Roseanna.
"I love them," she says. "I knew what the cranes symbolized right away, and they brought a smile to everyone who saw them."
There may not have been much her friends could do to help, but there were 1500 beautiful cranes they could make to brighten her particularly steep path.