Jackie Ferguson (right), of Roanoke County, with her 2-year-old granddaugher, Ashley.

In an earlier day and age, Ashley Elisabeth[cq] Ferguson wouldn’t be with us today. She would never have celebrated her second birthday, as she did with her large extended family on Saturday.

The little fireball would not be counting to 10, or saying her ABCs, like she does now. Sometimes she needs a bit of prompting with the latter.

The daughter of Lisa and Billy Ferguson, Ashley was born three months premature in 2010. She weighed 1 pound 2 ounces. She was so tiny, her grandmother Jackie Ferguson told me, that you could easily cradle Ashley in one hand.

“Her first diaper was the size of a saltine cracker,” Jackie Ferguson said. “I hung it on our Christmas tree.”

The teeny little girl was in the hospital for three months and there were times when she struggled greatly. A chief concern was the development of her lungs. She was on a respirator for two different stretches.

Many tears were shed and many prayers were prayed that she would make it. And she did. Jackie Ferguson is so thankful.

Hers was among scores of letters and emails I received in a little Thanksgiving Day experiment we started a few years ago that’s called “For what are you thankful?”

You can attach just about every adjective you can think of to the stories that emerge: heart-warming, tender, tragic, funny, and hair-raising  are but a few.

Lisa Ferguson helps her daughter Ashley blow out the candle on her birthday cake. Ashley, 2, spent three months in the hospital when she was born. | JEANNA DUERSCHERL | The Roanoke Times

What ties them together, though, is the underlying  emotion of thankfulness. Today’s the right day to consider that.

Jackie Ferguson is also thankful for many other reasons. She was 19, with two little boy toddlers when her first husband abandoned their family. The suddenly single mom took a job waitressing. Her parents lent a hand with childcare and when the boys were older, the welfare system did, too.

In her early 20s she was waiting tables at Lendy’s on Church Avenue downtown when she met Gary Ferguson, a Roanoke Gas company worker. He and his colleagues used to stop in for coffee before they headed out into the field.

They married when she was 25, and Gary, who had a daughter from a previous marriage, adopted her two sons.

“He’s a wonderful husband and father,” Jackie Ferguson told me. Both her sons grew up and had careers in the military. Read more »

Rochelle Loritts, pictured here during her daily walk at the Green Ridge Recreation Center, had a kidney transplant from her son, Jason Loritts in February 2011. "Thankful is not enough of a word for the love and care I have been given by my family, my significant other, Billy, UVa, many well wishers praying for me and my brave and loving Jason. ", wrote Rochelle. By Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

For what are you thankful?

I put that five-word question to readers around this time every year, in advance of an annual “Thankful” column that runs each Thanksgiving Day. It never fails to produce a torrent of heart-warming and uplifting answers, as well as a few surprises.

Last year, Rochelle Loritts of Roanoke was thankful for a kidney, donated by her adult son, to replace both of her disease-ravaged ones. It wasn’t long before she was off dialysis and feeling like a new woman, walking  5 miles every week.

Thomas Allen sent a handwritten list, which he worked on for a long time.

It started with meeting his wife-to-be at a prayer meeting in the late 1940s. It closed with a story of leaving his wallet in a restaurant in 2011, and later getting it back. The Roanoke County man died the day after he sent the letter.

Families are a focus of much of your thanks. For many it’s hard to imagine life without them. But it’s in the specifics that we find the gems.

In 2009, Allison Rowland of Roanoke wrote that she might not have made it through a difficult divorce without unwavering support from her parents and brother, and her children, a “constant source of love and inspiration.”

READ REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

AND TELL US WHY YOU’RE THANKFUL — READ THE GUIDELINES BELOW.

Go to the gallery of Thankfulness that didn’t make the print edition.

Rochelle Loritts, pictured here during her daily walk at the Green Ridge Recreation Center, had a kidney transplant from her son, Jason Loritts in February 2011. "Thankful is not enough of a word for the love and care I have been given by my family, " she says. | By Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

This time last year, Rochelle Loritts was spending 12 hours per week in a medical office. Her kidneys had failed as a result of diabetes that had plagued her for years.

She was in her 15th month of dialysis, and “I became weaker and sicker as time went on,” she told me.

Loritts, 65, of Northwest Roanoke, could barely walk without assistance. She had to move out of her two-story home because she couldn’t make it up the stairs.

But her life changed dramatically in February. Her eldest son, Jason Loritts, 38, of Suffolk, donated one of his kidneys to her. He was the best match of all three of her sons, who together decided they had to do something for their mom.

And oh my goodness she is grateful.

So are many others, based on answers from scores of readers to this simple question: “For what are you thankful?”

“As a result of my transplant, I am a new person,” Loritts wrote. “The University of Virginia will forever have my gratitude, respect and patronage for the outstanding care and monitoring of me and my son.

“Now, I am walking a minimum of 5 miles a week and I am able to assume most of my old lifestyle, which can be summed up in one word — active.

“Thankful is not enough of a word for the love and care I have been given by my family, my significant other of 11 years, Billy Gilbert (he was also my caregiver), UVa, many well wishers praying for me and my brave and loving Jason,” Loritts wrote.

“Sometimes on my daily walks I become tearful, full to the brim with joy and thankfulness for this new lease on life. I am committed to raising awareness of the many dangers of diabetes and the many rewards of organ donorship.”

Issues of sickness and health, and of loved ones lost and saved, were a dominant theme in this year’s reader responses. Much of what follows was edited for space, and others were omitted. Many of those are on my blog, at blogs.roanoke.com/dancasey

One arrived Nov. 14, literally from beyond the grave.

Thomas Allen of Roanoke County worked on it for a long time, his family told me. He mailed it on Friday, Nov. 11 — and then he died the next day. Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

First Virginians, not Pilgrims, had the hardest time, he writes

Hi,

Faithful reader, but have to call you on the Pilgrim thing.  As a Virginian, I am proud that Berkley Plantation held a thanksgiving way ahead of those guys even landing.

And we brought people here, families, ahead also.  So heck with the Pilgrims, we Virginian’s had the tough time!

Best of Thanksgiving to you and yours,

Doug Smith

Cuc Cao, a Vietnamese refugee fled her native country and spent 5 years trying to get to the United States. Cao has been in the United States for 25 years now, and has three grown children. "It is a very nice place. I love it here. I am so happy," she said. | By Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Happy Thankstgiving, everyone!

We’re loaded with thankfulness today. Here’s today’s column, featuring thankful people explaining that sentiment in their own words. It kicks off with the story of Cuc Cao, a Vietnamese refugee who, as a young woman, fled communist oppression in her homeland and finally made it to America.

I’ve edited those comments for publication.  If you’d like to see everything that everyone sent in, it’s here on this gallery.

But there’s more: A seriously cute video by my colleague Eric Brady, of tots from Community School explaining why they’re thankful.

Hope everyone has a happy, reflective and safe Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday, and 45 years ago, give or take, American folksinger Arlo Guthrie gave this country the ultimate Thanksgiving song: Alice’s Restaurant.

It’s more spoken-word than song, and it’s also a largely true, hilariously reverse-Catch 22 saga of why the Army refused to draft Guthrie into the Vietnam War. It was because he had been convicted of littering — one Thanksgiving Day in Stockbridge, Mass.

For more on the the story behind the song, and Alice, and the restaurant, look here.

My all time favorite radio station, WHFS-FM, used to play this 18:34 tune every year on Thanksgiving. Thanks to reader and fellow HFS fan Andrew Thacker for reminding me of that.

Enjoy, folks!

Photograph of a painting, circa 1900, by Edward Percy Moran (1862-1935), showing Myles Standish, William Bradford, William Brewster and John Carver signing the Mayflower Compact in a cabin aboard the Mayflower while other Pilgrims look on. The original hangs at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass. | Wikipedia.org

For my column today I asked readers to write in the reasons they felt thankful.

What follows are their responses, unedited — the ones I used in today’s column, and the ones I didn’t. They’re presented on individual pages, with some Thanksgiving-related art I found on Wikimedia Commons.

After each page, scroll down to the end and click on “Next” — that will take you to the following one.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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Ron came through with an old, but still-funny Thanksgiving joke that just about everyone except for members of PETA can find some humor in:

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word from the parrot was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity. John tried in vane to change the bird’s attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and many other things he could think of to clean up the bird’s vocabulary.

John was feed up and yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even more rude. In desparation John grabbed the parrot and put it in the freezer. For a while John could hear the parrot squawking, kicking and screeming. suddenly there was complete quiet. Not a sound for more than a minute.

John was worried that he had harmed the parrot so he quickly opened the freezer. the parrot calmly stepped out into John’s outstretched arms and said, “I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I’m sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior.”

John was stunned at the change in attitude.

As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the parrot spoke up, very softly, asking “Excuse me, may I ask what the turkey did?”

Thanks, Ron! And Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Readers, if you have any other TG jokes, we’re happy to have them as comments.

NYPL Digitial Library | Wikimedia Commons

I am asking for your help, regulars and newbies, in writing my Thanksgiving Day column.  It will be your answers to the following broad question:

What are you thankful for?

Please write something from your heart, rather than from those liberal/conservative/atheist/fundamentalist/cynic/sexist/hunter/animal-rights activist/sarcastic, etc. parts of your head.

Please DON’T tell us you’re happy that a Democrat is in the White House, or that the Republicans are on the rise in Congress,  or because abortion is legal or that you’re thankful that at long last you can legally take your concealed handgun in a bar.

I’m looking for more personal-oriented stuff.

A couple of notes:

Keep your entries to 50 words, give or take a few, and send them in emails to me at this link. Or, at dan(dot)casey(at)roanoke(dot)com with the subject line Thankful.

At the end of your 50 words include your first and last name and locality and state, like this:

Dan Casey, Roanoke, Va. (I will not publish stuff in the column without a full name & locality.) Also include your phone number in an e-mail — I won’t publish that.

You can also do it as a post on this blog but I’ll need your full name and locality.

I’ll sort through these beginning Nov. 19 and cull a wide-ranging bunch of heartfelt stuff for the column that appears on Thanksgiving.

I’ll tell you one thing I’m thankful for: That I have a bunch of earnest and passionate readers of this blog who will help me write that day’s column.

Cheers, and let’s see the thanks pour in!

Bush in Bagdad, Thanksgiving 2003 | Tina Hager | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: This is the first of 21 pages of thanks from people whose thankfulness didn’t make the print edition of the newspaper because of space considerations. To navigate these pages, simply read the entry then click on the word Next down at the end.

I was born in the USA. I can practice a faith and vote in elections.

I experience the best medical care, have access to educational and transportation systems, and reside in a safe and beautiful environment, with clean air and water.

I enjoy a home with indoor heating and plumbing, refrigeration for the healthy foods I eat and electricity for the best technology available.

The police and military personnel protect me from harm. My dear family, special friends and hospitable neighbors complete my world.

God Bless America.

Dottie Woods
Blacksburg, VA

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