Grieving parents give other children chance for happiness
Gregory Lewis, Sun SentinelP
After an agonizing year of hospital stays that ended with a child’s death, and after four years of legal battles, what Chad and Michele Denlinger remember most about their son Sean is his smile.
Inspired by that bright beam, they are using money from a legal settlement and some of their own to give smiles and better lives to 1,000 children in India.
Sean Denlinger was 3 when he died in 2002, a year after something went wrong during a procedure to change his feeding tube at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. He was born with a genetic disorder that should not have shortened his life, the Denlingers and court documents say.
Sean’s parents sued and won settlements, but no admission of guilt, from the hospital and one of the doctors. They donated the money to The Smile Train, a nonprofit founded in 2000 that secures corrective surgeries for children with cleft palates and lips.
“It is not often people take this much pain and turn it into something so marvelous for children around the world,” said Michele Sinesky, donor relations manager at the New York-based agency that helps children in 78 of the world’s poorest countries.
The $250,000 gift from the Denlingers may not set a record, Sinesky said, but “in 10 years it’s the only one that every time I talk about it, it brings tears to my eyes.”
On what would have been Sean’s 10th birthday, April 27, 2009, The Smile Train and the Denlingers began a 1,000-day campaign to fix the smiles of 1,000 children in Varanasi, India. Because the charity works with medical professionals who donate their skills, each operation costs no more than a man’s suit.
By the end of this year, more than 600 boys and girls will have normal faces — and a chance at lives free of ostracism — because of Sean.
“This wasn’t about money,” said Michele Denlinger, 43, the band director at Coral Way K-8 Center in Miami. “This is about two parents keeping a promise to our kid.”
Sean was a resilient little boy who laughed a lot, his mother said. He has a younger sister, Sara, now 10, who has a lovely smile of her own.
He liked going to pre-school. He used a walker with wheels to get around, and was doing well in speech therapy.
“He was very interactive,” said Denlinger. When words fell short, he made signs to communicate.
In November 2001 he went to the hospital for what should have been a routine changing of his feeding tube. He suffered a dangerous internal stomach leak that was not immediately detected, Denlinger said.
The following year was horrific for Sean and his parents and grandparents, who watched him in around-the-clock shifts at hospitals in Cincinnati and Miami where he endured a series of operations.
Finally, he suffered an overwhelming internal infection. Two weeks later, he was taken off life support.
“We felt like orphans,” Denlinger said. “It was very disorienting.”
“It hurts to talk about it,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “But if we didn’t, it would be an injustice to him.
“With that said, now you understand why we had to do something extremely beautiful with his settlement. What he went through made us make a promise to him. This is about Sean. We don’t want to sling mud.”
The Denlingers filed a malpractice suit in 2004.
A spokesman for Joe DiMaggio said the hospital does not comment on litigation or settlements.
After a particularly tough day in 2006, Michele Denlinger went online to search for a charity where Sean’s money could do the most good.
“The cost of a [man’s] suit could save the life of a kid.” Struck by those words, she stopped looking.
She told her husband about the charity and he said nothing. He just smiled.
The Smile Train is “one of the most productive charities — dollar for deed — in the world,” The New York Times reported in 2008.
When they called the nonprofit to tell founder Brian Mullaney what they hoped to do, he flew from New York to Miami to hear the news in person.
A year ago The Smile Train arranged for the Denlingers to fly to India to see for themselves what the settlement money has wrought. They were welcomed as warmly as family, and as respectfully as heroes.
Mothers of the children who had already benefited hugged and kissed them and cried joyfully.
“Meeting all those kids who my son had saved…” Michele Denlinger was overcome with emotion. “It was redemption for him.”
And there he is, a permanent presence on the Denlingers’ website: Sean Denlinger, smile No. 1,001.
For more information on The Smile Train, go to http://www.smiletrain.org or call 1-800-932-9541. The Denlingers’ website is http://www.1001smiles.com
Gregory Lewis can be reached at glewis@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2084.
