Tiffany Ealy
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Location: Petrolia, PA
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The story behind the foundation
One Last Shot
Controversy spurs Pa. mom to make sure sick kids get hunt of a lifetime
By: Ad Crable, Outdoors Editor
It's what 18-year-old Matthew Pattison wanted to do more than anything else before he died.
Hunt a moose in Canada.
Tina and Chester Pattison, parents of the Erie youth who had Hodgkin's disease, vowed to get him that hunt. Their quest and where it has lead is, by turns, infuriating, sad, touching and, ultimately, inspiring.
The couple had six children and their modest income was already being drained by one child testing for muscular dystrophy.
Tina, 44, a school bus driver and a longtime fund-raiser for Erie County Special Olympics, remembered reading about a dream hunt provided for a terminally ill boy by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Western Pennsylvania.
Since it was founded in 1980, the Phoenix-based Make-A-Wish has granted 66,000 wishes to children under 18 with a life-threatening illness.
The group's motto is "Our wish are only limited to the child's imagination."
But, unfortunately for Matt, his dying request came shortly after the group had been excoriated by animal-rights activists.
In 1996, Make-A-Wish had sent a Minnesota high-school senior to Alaska to hunt a Kodiak brown bear. Anti-hunting groups threw a fit and mounted a publicity campaign. Hunting groups rallied behind the boy's trip.
The tug-of-war made national headlines.
Not long after, the Western Pennsylvania chapter agreed to pay for a dying 17-year-old Allegheny County boy's dream to go to Alaska to hunt moose. Again, the philanthropic group was caught in a national crossfire.
The behavior of animal-rights groups "was appalling," says Ann Fisher, spokeswoman for the Western Pennsylvania chapter, "We were threatened bodily. "
"None of the people knew this courageous young man and none of them knew how important this was to him."
The weakened teen made it to Alaska. He had a moose in the sights of his rifle, then decided that was enough and didn't pull the trigger. He died a few weeks after the hunt.
The controversy surrounding the two trips recently resulted in the international Make-A-Wish Foundation dropping all future hunting requests for "safety" reasons.
But that was not the policy when Tina Pattison called in 1998.
She says she was shocked and disheartened when she was told that her son's wish couldn't be considered because of the recent anti-hunting fuss.
Angry but determined, she began calling sportsmen's organizations.
Chester and Tina's prayers were answered with a call from an outfitter in the tiny town of Nordegg, Alberta, Canada.
The whole town, it seemed-all 68 residents-was pitching in for Matt.
The outfitter, Clayton Grosso, whose wife had lost an arm to cancer, was providing the hunt for free.
A resort lodge would provide lodging for Matt and his father.
A helicopter charter company provided aerial transportation from the town to the hunt area. A drilling and blasting company paid for Matt's various license fees. A cell phone was donated.
A grocery store donated food for the remote hunt camp. A feed store paid for food for packhorses and offered to butcher the moose if Matt got one. A nurse took time off work and stayed in camp in case there was a medical emergency.
A Wyoming-based broker of hunting trips paid for airplane tickets for Matt and his father.
Even now, more than a year after the hunt, Tina Pattison gets tearful as she ticks off the many donations of time, services and money by a far-off town of strangers.
"We're going up there this summer so I can thank them personally. I'm tired of telling them thank you in cards and letters."
Matt got his moose, a huge moose. It's 55-inch-wide rack is being measured to see if it is a record.
The drained but ecstatic teen returned home to Pennsylvania. The cancer's spread through his body accelerated and he died in April 1999 at age 19.
The anticipation of the hunt, his mother says, kept her son going through many months of pain.
"He kept saying, I'll be all right because I'm going on that moose hunt," she recalls.
At the funeral, people kept coming up to the Pattisons and giving them money in Matt's name for a good cause. One person suggested they give the money to Make-A-Wish Foundation.
No, Tina explained, it wasn't Make-A-Wish that sent Matt on his hunt of a lifetime. And then the thought entered her mind: why not form a new foundation to fulfill the hunting and fishing wishes of sick youths.
In typical go-get-'em fashion, Tina began spreading the word. An attorney donated her time and in August the nonprofit Hunt of a Lifetime was formed.
Some of the first startup funds came from a small town in Georgia after the high school paper, written by students and teachers, ran a story on the effort.
The magazine of the 13-million-member National Rifle Association published a story on the charity. The current issues of both Field and Stream and Outdoor Life carry endorsement stories on Hunt of a Lifetime.
At its meeting earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Game Commission voted to donate $2,500.
A lot of $5 and $10 checks have arrived in the mail, as well as a $1,000 donation from an Illinois resident and another from sporting-goods giant Cabela's.
A Washington State man sent in a $300 check in the name of his son, who died two days before his 18th birthday. The man told Tina his fondest memories are of father and son hunting together.
The responses have been overwhelming, says Tina, who estimates she's written more than 100 thank-you notes already.
Free fishing trips have been offered from outfitters and groups in Florida and Missouri. Elk, deer, turkey, duck and other hunts have come from Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, Mississippi, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Canada.
While Tina was being interviewed for this story, a Florida guide called to offer a free alligator hunt each year.
Pennsylvanians have been generous, also. A Riegelsville taxidermist has offered to mount the trophy of each youth who takes a hunt. A hunting preserve is offering an elk hunt. An Erie travel agent is handling donations of "frequent flyer" miles.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation has agreed to refer hunting requests to the new group. So have two other children's wish-granting national foundations, The Dream Foundation and Children's Wish Foundation International.
Tina holds no grudge against Make-A-Wish. "I understand where their hands are," she says. "I'm more upset with animal-rights activists who can't think of a child's needs before their own beliefs. Not every child wants to go to Disney World."
The day before Christmas, Hunt of a Lifetime got its first request; a 14-year-old Wisconsin youth with a brain tumor had missed the last two seasons of buck season.
Working through a Wisconsin man who had called earlier with an offer to help in any way, the youth was placed on a hunting preserve. On Jan. 15, the lad took a dandy eight-point buck with a rifle.
Also in the works is sending a 17-year-old South Carolina boy with lymphoma to Alaska to hunt black bear or moose, and an 18-year-old Ohio teen with a rare cancer to hunt bear next June in Quebec.
"I know what it meant to my son and I hope to do many, many more," says Tina.
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Tiffany Ealy
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