Children's Hospital Rejects Charity's Toys

Brecken’s Blessings has donated more than $10,000, 1,500 toys, 4,150 books and 500 ICU parent gift baskets to Wisconsin Children’s Hospital over the past three years.

The non-profit was started three years ago by the parents of Brecken Markee, who died from a congenital heart defect.

Little Brecken spent much of his life at Wisconsin Children’s Hospital. And to honor the support they had received, Brittany and Blake Markee started the charity – hoping to give back.

But this year – Wisconsin Children’s Hospital rejected Brecken’s Blessings because it was too religious.

“It has been brought to my attention that our 3^rd annual Christmas toy drive donations will not be accepted by the hospital, because of our sticker logo having the word ‘blessings’ in it,” the charity wrote on its Facebook page.

“Therefore, Brecken’s “blessings” can be perceived as a religious affiliation which goes against their policies,” Mrs. Markee wrote.

What sort of a godforsaken hospital would deny children Christmas presents because the charity might be perceived as religious?

“This hurts my heart and I’ve spent a lot of the morning crying about it,” she wrote. “This hospital means a lot to our family.”

Instead, the charity chose to bless other non-profits in town by donating the toys to a woman’s shelter.

“My intentions behind Breckens blessings was to spread goodness and to bring happiness, not to impose my religion on anybody,” Mrs. Markee wrote. “The love and care Brecken received from the staff was what inspired us to create a non profit and fight for the Congenital Heart Disease community. Brecken truly was a BLESSING in our lives and in the lives of so many others that knew him.”

Needless to say, there was massive outrage in the community and the hospital face unrelenting criticism.

“This is ridiculous! My son received one of Brecken’s Blessings toy donations when admitted this spring and it brought the biggest smile to his face during a scary time,” the parent of one patient wrote on social media.

After being deluged with angry phone calls and emails, someone at the hospital realized they had screwed up.

Hospital leadership called Mrs. Markee and apologized – saying they made a mistake.

“We made a mistake and have apologized to Brecken’s mom. To be perfectly clear: Children’s Wisconsin values the work of Brecken’s Blessings and their use of the word ‘blessings’ should not have been a hindrance to accepting their generous donations,” Children’s Wisconsin wrote in a statement to Wisconsin Right Now.

“As a values-based organization, we will take the learnings from this mistake seriously and work to ensure our guidelines are both well communicated and consistent with our mission. We hope to be able to work with Brecken’s Blessings in the future and are truly sorry for the hurt this has caused.”