Parade to kick off annual Children’s Miracle Network broadcast

The Children’s Miracle Network and McLeod Children’s Hospital are gearing up to celebrate the lives of children saved through the donations of people throughout the country with the Miracle Parade.

The parade is a kick-off to the Children’s Miracle Network Celebration broadcast and will begin at 5 p.m. Friday.

Davis Sawyer, McLeod Children’s Hospital Fund Manager and director of the McLeod Children’s Miracle Network, said the event is all about the miracle children and celebrating the great strides they’ve made over the years with the help of the Children’s Miracle Network.

“McLeod Children’s Hospital is one of four children’s miracle hospitals in South Carolina,” she said. “The parade is the kick-off to this coming weekend. We wanted to make the weekend bigger and more fun for the children.”

Starting at the Wal-Mart SuperCenter on South Irby Street, the parade will continue down Irby Street, turns right at Cheves, and end at the McLeod Plaza roughly 30 minutes later.

“We have the (Florence County) sheriff’s department (participating),” she said. “All the current and previous miracle children ride in the parade, other children who have been treated at McLeod. The fire department is involved and the Pee Dee Street Rodders, the Swamp Fox Car Club, is involved.”

There are three new miracle children being honored in this year’s parade, Sawyer said.

“But in the parade, we’ll have anywhere from 15 to 20 of our miracle children riding in it,” she said.

Valerie Tyner, mother of Logan Tyner, a 2005 miracle child, said without the support of the Children’s Miracle Network and McLeod Children’s Hospital, she might not have been able to enroll her now 7-year-old daughter in cheerleading practice.

“The money brought in by the Children’s Miracle Network provided a lot of the equipment for these tiny babies,” she said. “Logan was born at 24 weeks and she weighed 2 pounds and 2 ounces.”

Valerie Tyner said her daughter had to be on a ventilator and stayed in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit for four months before she was allow to go home to be with her family.

“I was able to bring her home on oxygen and monitors and a good bit of medication for about a year,” she said.

Tyner said a reason for Logan’s prematurity was never found, but now, she is a happy, active girl.

“Just to see her be able to run is really wonderful,” Tyner said.

Tyner said the time her daughter spent in the McLeod Children’s Hospital helped her deal with raising a child who is so independent, yet still needs her care in some ways.

“The nurses there would get emotionally involved in a good way,” she said. “It’s a big roller coaster you’re on during (something like) that.”

Logan said being a miracle child is fun.

“I do like (riding in convertibles),” she said.

If You’re Going

What: Children’s Miracle Network/McLeod Children’s Hospital Miracle Parade

When: 5 p.m. Friday

Where: Beginning at Wal-Mart SuperCenter on South Irby Street and ending at McLeod Medical Plaza on East Cheves Street, Florence