By Claire Ballor
The Dallas Morning News
HURST, Texas — After no one came to her son’s eighth birthday party Sunday, a Hurst mother decided to get the police involved.
Although no one had responded to Jennifer Day and her husband’s invitations, they hoped for the best and baked cakes and bought pizza. But no one showed up to celebrate with their son, Graham.
He had the same heartbreaking experience when he turned 6.
“This always happens,” the devastated boy told his mother.
“He said it in the most broken voice I’ve ever heard,” Day said. “It happened once before, but this time something snapped in me and it was like no, this is not happening to him again.”
Desperate to cheer up her son, she posted a message on the Nextdoor neighborhood website.
“I think I’m posting this out of utter emotional distress ... but I need to ask if anyone wants to come to an 8 yr old boys birthday party to show him that he’s loved and valued as a person,” she wrote. “NO gifts are required other than the gift of friendship.”
https://twitter.com/jmchiquillo/status/869337616054976514
No responses came in right away, so Day thought of a last resort. She and her husband drove to the Hurst Police Department and asked whether an officer might come see her son, who has always wanted to be a policeman.
Soon after she and her husband got home, the station’s entire shift showed up at her front door — with a few Hurst firefighters, too.
They lined the street with their patrol cars and firetrucks and came inside to eat cake and sing “Happy Birthday.”
The department said on Facebook that the officers “were honored to attend Graham’s 8th birthday party!”
“There’s no way I can repay what they did for his little broken heart,” Day said.
https://twitter.com/HurstPoliceDept/status/869337474769846273
And while she and her husband were trying to enlist the help of the police, several families they’d never met had seen the Nextdoor message and came with their children to celebrate. Other people in the area got together and brought presents for Graham.
“By the end of it, I think he forgot that his friends didn’t come over for his birthday,” Day said. “He was so happy.”
She was overwhelmed by the show of support from police and firefighters and the kindness of others in the community.
“Something like this, it literally guts you as a parent because you can’t fix it, at least in that moment,” she said through tears. “But the Hurst Police Department and the Hurst Fire Department, they went above and beyond and made his day.”
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©2017 The Dallas Morning News