Wishing Well Young Children Share With Us Their Hopes For The Coming Year; From Good Health For Grandpa To Good Grades, Less Crime And World Peace

Eight-year-old Melissa Bauer’s New Year’s wish isn’t for dolls, video games of world peace.

She wants her grandpa.

Paul Clark, Melissa’s 76-year-old maternal grandfather, is locked in a battle with leukemia. Sine being diagnosed on Labor Day weekend last year, doctors have pronounced him all but dead three times.

He now walks without a cane and has been able to stop chemotherapy, but muscle spasms cause his neck and head to shake.

“I don’t want him to die,” said Bauer, a second grader at Mead’s Meadow Ridge Elementary. “I want my grandpa still alive.”

Melissa and more than 100 other North Side elementary school students told the North Side Voice their hopes for 1996. Their wishes can be found inside this edition, on pages 2 and 3.

Melissa’s response: “I hope there will be a cure for leukemia because my grandpa has it.”

Clark and Melissa usually see each other several times a year, but the frequency increased since his diagnosis. Bauer treasurers the doll’s cradle and toy truck Clark made for her.

Clark lost his father, mother and two brothers in a skating accident at the age of nine. As he has gotten older, family has meant more and more to him.

“I want to spend as much time as I can with my kids,” said Clark. “I’ll tell ya, I’ve got so many neat kids and grandkids.”

An active, determined man who took up snow skiing at 65 and who still cleaned his own chimney at 75, he said he feels “like I am going to get better.”<

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: For related stories, see headlines: 1. ‘I want everybody to be nice to our environment’ 2. ‘My wish…a lot of peace and a lot of snow’ 3. ‘I hope for no guns or cigarettes in America’ 4. ‘My wish for the New Year…I hope my dad survives taxes’