Hold your cards

As misinformation goes, the story about Craig Shergold has been of the more harmless sort — though expensive for its recipients. If only they could get it to stop.

Millions of people know Craig Shergold, or think they do. He is the boy in England who in 1989 was suffering from cancer and wanted to be remembered in the Guinness Book of World Records for collecting the most greeting cards. Well, he did — 16 million cards arrived by 1990. His tumor was successfully removed in 1991. Mr. Shergold is now a healthy college student, yet the card-sending public continues under the impression that he is permanently a child, permanently afflicted with cancer and permanently in search of more greeting cards, or business cards as a later version of his request is rendered.

He is not, and nor is the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which had nothing to do with trying to fulfill the wish, but was dragged into the mail-athon as part of the hoax that began several years after Mr. Shergold was cured. The hoax consists of a chain letter that roughly describes Mr. Shergold — as of 1989 — and his request, and asks the recipient to send a business card to Make-A-Wish and then send the chain letter to 10 friends. The resulting deluge of responses over the years has caused Make-a-Wish to open a warehouse to hold its mail and set up an 800 number to explain the situation. Staff at the United Cerebral Palsy of Northeastern Maine, located in Bangor, not long ago received a copy of the chain letter and, being kind-hearted folks, followed their directions, only to discover their mistake after they had sent on the letter. They, like a lot of organizations, are now spending time trying to stop it.

Still the mail keeps coming, even after a lengthy story six years ago in the New York Times. Even after Make-A-Wish and its affiliates have endlessly explained that the cards are not needed or desired. For whatever reason – the simplicity of the request, the fact that just about everyone by now has heard about the cancer-stricken boy from England, that the request doesn’t ask for money – the cards won’t stop. The time and money this has cost Make-A-Wish Foundation is, of course, immense and distracts a good organization from helping people.

So when the chain letter arrives from a well-meaning friend asking to help this poor child fulfill his wish, fulfill another – the foundation’s — by tossing out the letter, and tell 10 friends to do the same.