In 2005, I invited our biggest Founding Donor, Mr. Walter Haeffner of Zürich Switzerland, to join us for a very important trip to China with Pres. George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara.
Mr. Haefner responded right away and told me he was too old to make the trip (he was almost 100 years old) but asked if his son Martin and his wife Marianne could come.
I was so glad he did.
I met Martin and Marianne in Beijing in November 2005 and they couldn’t have been nicer.
They were both very smart, charitable, and interested in our programs.
They really seemed to appreciate the opportunity to see our work first-hand in China and to meet so many of our patients and their families. And of course, our partner surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other medical professionals.
After visiting China, they came on other Smile Train trips and enjoyed that even more.
When Walter Haefner passed away in 2012, Martin and Marianne carried on his very generous support for Smile Train. And when we launched WonderWork in 2011, a start-up donation from Martin and Marianne made it possible.
Altogether, donations from the Haefner Family to Smile Train and to WonderWork totaled more than $60,000,000 making them by far our most generous and supportive donors.
Their unwavering support over the past two decades has helped provide more than 1,500,000 surgeries for children and adults no one else would help.
These life-saving surgeries helped repair millions of cleft lips and palates.
Rebuild the bodies and faces of thousands of severely burned children and adults.
Straighten the twisted feet of thousands of children crippled with clubfoot.
And restored the eyesight of hundreds of thousands of blind children and adults.
Over the past 30 years I have met thousands of donors but I have never met anyone who has helped as many people as Walter, Martin and Marianne Haefner.
