On behalf of the children and families of the Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospitals of Loyola, we would like to thank you for the generous donations of toys and activities. Your donation was wonderful and touched so many patients, that did not expect to receive anything.

You are truly making a difference in a child’s hospital stay. The patients faces light up when they are given the toys. Your donation played a bug part on the child life program.

Thank you again for your generosity. I am looking forward to working with you in the future!

Megan Gertz, BS, CLS – Child Life Specialist

Receiving the Lewis A. Affetto Scholarship enabled me to attend the best college for the career I am pursuing. Through the funds received from the scholarship, I was able to enroll in DePaul University’s College of Digital Media. As DePaul is a private university, it came with an expensive tuition price tag. This very generous scholarship helped lessen the burden of meeting DePaul’s tuition and allowed me to live on campus.

I am currently a sophomore at DePaul pursuing a BA in Graphic Design with a minor in Marketing and am in the top 10% of DePaul University’s students in academics. I continue to live on-campus and am a very active participant in clubs and organizations around campus. I credit the Affetto’s and their scholarship with my success and involvement at DePaul. It has given me confidence in my course work as I continue toward my graphic design degree.

Aside from helping pay for my tuition, the scholarship has also allowed me to become an extended part of the very welcoming and loving Affetto family. I will never know how to quite repay them for all their generosity that they have showed to my family, but I am forever grateful to them for the opportunity they provided to me.

Thank you so much, Mr. and Mrs. Affetto!

Art is fundamentally the foundation to all great ideas; fortunately I was given the Lewis A. Affetto Jr. Scholarship to learn and expand my mind. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity and I assure you I will work hard. Creativity is key, art is needed in the world, and I have come to the realization that by contributing my creations to the world I have found eternal bliss and so thank you for supporting me.

Receiving the Lewis A. Affetto Jr. Scholarship has offered me a chance to continue working toward my dream of becoming an illustrator, and no matter how many time I say ‘thank you,’ it will never be enough to show how grateful and honored I am to have received it.

Ever since I was very young, I have always wanted to be an artist. My free time was divided up between drawing silly little pictures with markers, and imagining entire worlds where anything was possible. Flash forward a few years and I found myself favoring the arts more than the rest of my schoolwork; opting to sketch a picture or read a book instead of studying probability and the periodic table. However as the years went on, I found myself slipping further away from the art that I loved, struggling to hold on to and rekindle the passion I had to follow my dream.

I rediscovered my passion while on a mission trip with my church. Each day that week I would work with children and watched them become captivated by picture books. The children would take the lessons of the books to heart, even though some of them were too young to read and some were just starting to learn to speak English. When I asked one little boy what he thought of the story one day, he told me that he could not read the words, however he was still able to enjoy and learn from the story through the pictures. Since then I have had my eyes opened to the impact that illustrations can have on children.

Because of this I have a new dream, not only to become an artist, but also to become an illustrator and help teach children to open their minds and use their imaginations through my illustrations. With the help of the Affetto family, I can see my dream becoming a reality. In 2014 I was graciously awarded the Lewis A. Affetto Jr. Scholarship to help me in pursuit of my ambitions. Since then I have learned many things during my classes at Northern Illinois University. I have worked and studied hard towards earning my BFA in Illustration. The Lewis A. Affetto Jr. Scholarship has helped me with my tuition, but I find that it has a greater meaning than that to me. The Scholarship has opened my eyes to the ever-growing number of people who support my dream and me, and I can say that I would not be where I am right now with out their support.

I will forever be grateful to Affetto family for the support and opportunity they have shown not only to me, but also to all who have been recipients of this wonderful scholarship.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Affetto and all of the Affetto Family!