|Photo by Derek Redd| A group of Bellaire Elementary School fourth graders delivered 64 Squishmallow toys Thursday to the WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital Comprehensive Breast Care Center. Pictured are, front row from left, Chelsey Wade, Katarina Wilson, Jemma Norris, Tristyn Harris-Wade, D Mills and Justin Wilson. Back row, from left, are Breast Care Center RN Paula Fedorke, Breast Care Center Program Coordinator Kyla Morris, Bellaire Elementary Counselor Natalie Manners, WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital President and CEO Douglass Harrison and Breast Care Center Nurse Practitioner Jamie Seszko.

WHEELING – A group of Bellaire Elementary School students know the comfort that comes from squeezing a Squishmallow stuffed animal.

“It makes me feel wanted and cared for,” fourth-grader Tristyn Harris-White said.

So they wanted to help others in need of that comfort to experience the same feeling.

Those students arrived at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital on Thursday morning with dozens of Squishmallow toys to distribute through the hospital’s Comprehensive Breast Care Center. Bellaire Elementary counselor Natalie Manners said the project among the fourth graders started coming together in late September, when they started discussing what they could do to help others. After some brainstorming, they decided to collect Squishmallows for breast cancer patients.

Harris-White called Breast Care Center Program Coordinator Kyla Morris who thought it was a great idea. The students created a flyer they posted around Bellaire and by the end, they were able to collect 64 donated Squishmallows from all the classes at Bellaire Elementary.

“The community did not let the kids down,” Manners said. “The kids were so excited. It was the administration, the teachers, the parents, it was the kids themselves bringing them in. It was so nice to have that camaraderie.”

Some of the Squishmallows will go home with patients, so they can put them against their chests to alleviate the discomfort they might feel from wearing a seatbelt. Other Squishmallows will stay in the Comprehensive Breast Care Center as comfort items for those undergoing treatment.

WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital President and CEO Douglass Harrison said he couldn’t be happier to see students in the Ohio Valley take the time and effort to help the hospital help those they treat every day.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I’ve said over and over that this is what community is all about. That these kids took an interest in our patients here at Wheeling Hospital, at their community hospital, it means the world to us.”