It’s not every day Spiderman gets a request to draw Sonic the Hedgehog on the outside of a hospital window 10 or 12 stories off the ground.
It turns out that Spiderman, as portrayed by Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue Technician II Kelly VanWingerden, is not much of an artist, Prince William County fire and rescue officials said in a news release.
Still, she did her best with the recent request when she rappelled from the roof of the Inova Women’s Hospital tower and the Inova L.J. Murphy Children’s Hospital in Fairfax County in a Spider-Man costume.
“He held up a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog for me to draw,” VanWingerden said of a young cancer patient she recently visited through a hospital window. “I do not draw, but I thought I’d give it my best shot. I don’t think anybody looking at it would have known it was Sonic the Hedgehog. It looked like a blob with eyes, but he absolutely loved it. He was cracking up. His mom was in the background taking pictures and laughing so hard at my drawing. That was just fun to be able to actually make them smile and laugh when they have this horrible thing happening in their lives.”
VanWingerden and some fellow Prince William County firefighters recently joined other firefighters from across the D.C. area to practice rappelling from the hospital building to hone their skills.
Fairfax County Firefighter Loren Jewell, who herself was a childhood cancer survivor, helped start the rappelling exercises during the height of the COVID epidemic, the release said.
Dressing up as superheroes to visit the children started earlier when people could visit children in their rooms. Jewell said the idea of rappelling the building had been floating around the department for some time. The COVID-19 epidemic helped focus the effort.
“We do it for the kids,” VanWingerden said. “We see people on their worst days, and it’s a really nice way to make people smile, and you’re doing a good thing for the kids. It just makes you feel good.”
This article was written by FFXnow’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.
