Revisiting ‘Christmas In July’

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey there. It’s a great time to support our work. Right now, every gift gets matched! Here’s where to do it.

Today we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes from the archive – a story about giving – and bringing you an update.

In 1980, a young father named Denny Buehler was battling leukemia and needed to travel from Cincinnati to Seattle for treatment. To raise the money, his friends and family threw a softball tournament.

Denny passed away a few months later. But his friends and family turned the softball tournament into a beloved tradition, and a chance to give back. For more than 40 years, they’d host the games and sell hot dogs to raise money for people in the area who needed help with medical expenses.

Then in 2019, the Denny Beuhler Memorial Fund found a way to make the money they’d fundraise go a hundred times farther. Literally.

Inspired by a segment on Last Week Tonight, they partnered with a group to buy up old medical debt – and erase it.

Now in 2024, that group – now known as Undue Medical Debt – has grown its influence and helped crush billions (!) in debt.

Here’s a transcript of this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, real quick. I am sure you have noticed the issues we cover have been all over the news and the public conversation recently, which, wow. And when that conversation moves on, we will be here doing our best asking, what can we maybe do about all this right now? We need your help to do that.
0:21.5	And right now, thanks to the Institute for Nonprofit News,
0:24.7	every dollar you give us gets matched, doubled.
0:27.6	You can pitch in right now at arm and a leg show.com slash support.
0:33.0	That's arm and a leg show.com slash support.
0:36.7	Thank you so much.
0:43.8	Hey there.
0:44.8	We are bringing back a story we first put out five years ago.
0:48.0	We called it Christmas in July because it's a story about giving.
0:52.5	Some things have changed since 2019.
0:55.1	Hi, we've had a couple big presidential elections, a pandemic.
0:58.9	It's been a little news on our beat recently.
1:01.4	We'll have some updates and some context to add at the end.
1:04.4	For now, here's the story.
1:10.1	In 1980, Denny Bueller was a 24-year-old guy with three kids and leukemia. He needed a bone marrow
1:16.9	transplant, and in those days, that was not available in Cincinnati where he lived. He had to go to
1:21.7	Seattle with his sister, who was the donor, and his wife. Well, I remember my dad, and I'm the only
1:26.4	one of my siblings who does.
1:28.0	This is Denny's oldest daughter, Jenny Spring. She was four when he went to Seattle.
1:32.1	I do remember knowing he was sick. I remember, you know, we lived with his parents, our grandparents,
1:38.6	while he and my mom and Aunt Cynthia were in Seattle. It was a long-distance relationship,
1:46.3	letters, sending tapes back and forth. In It was a long-distance relationship, letters, sending tapes back and forth.
	...

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