AMERICAN HEADQUARTERS--55 WEST 42nd STREET--NEW YORK 18, N. Y.

I have been ashed by Constance Gurd Rykert, of Foster Parents' Plan for War Children, Inc., to thank TIME'S readers for the help they have given. Mrs. Rykert writes as follows:

"In TIME'S issues of June 7, 1948 and February 21, 1949 you published photographs of Italo Renzetti, a war-maimed and blinded little Italian boy living in a colony in Rome under the care of Foster Parents' Plan for War Children. In the latter picture Italo was using a Galimberti machine (for writing Braille), which had been bought with TIME readers' contributions. I thought that you and your readers might be interested in the sequel.

"When the second picture was published, the contributions increased to nearly $1,000. The money came from all over the country, and was sent by all kinds of people: business men, Sunday school groups, housewives, veterans, and the anonymous. The largest single contribution was $100--from a businessman in Waterbury, Conn. A Rochester, N.Y. business girl sent $1, saying: 'I wish it were ten times the amount.' And so it went--until the Italo Renzetti fund had reached just under $1,000.

"For the present Italo is being cared for at a colony for war-maimed children near Rome. He has an American foster mother, but the fund accumulated for him through the generosity of TIME readers will mean the difference between day and night in his life. When he grows older, he may want to specialize in a course of study, or set himself up in business. The money will enable him to do these things.

"Italo is not the only child whose life has been made happier for having his picture in TIME. In June, 1947 your Medicine department published one of our Foster Parents' photographs of a little Belgian girl, Maria Michiels, who had lost an eye and suffered severe injuries when a V-2 hit her home in Antwerp. A veteran of the 13th Port, an American Army unit which operated Antwerp's port after the invasion, saw the picture in TIME and thought that he recognized the girl. He made some inquiries and established the fact that she was indeed the child saved from her burning home by a sergeant in his outfit. The sergeant had risked his life to rescue her, and had later been decorated for it.

"At present Maria has 300 foster fathers in the U.S.--all members of the 13th Port Veterans' Association. They contribute the customary $180 yearly toward her support, and are helping to pay the cost of a long--and as yet unfinished--series of expensive plastic operations on her face. Maria writes to them regularly.

"Because of these two events, although we are a nonprofit organization with little money to spend on advertising, we decided, in fear and trembling, to take an advertisement in TIME for $4,070. We had never spent even half that sum on a single advertisement, but we reasoned that if TIME readers were such generous people the ad could not do otherwise than pay.

"It did! The first advertisement (February 13) brought in nearly four times the amount spent. So we took another one in the April 3 issue, and that is on its way to catching up with the first one.

"This letter is just by way of saying 'thank you' to you and to the readers of TIME from Italo, Maria and the many other war children you are helping."

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.