Marblehead woman fights cancer with bears

MARBLEHEAD – The Penny Bear Company was born 20 years ago when Marblehead resident Penny Wigglesworth met 16-year-old Seth Bailey, who was given only three months to live.Bailey was traveling to Pittsburgh for a double lung transplant. Wigglesworth gave him a stuffed teddy bear wearing a knit sweater with a good-luck penny in the pocket.”When he came home, he said, ?I don’t know what I would have done without that bear,'” said Wigglesworth. “He said he was so scared in the middle of the night, and the bear brought him comfort.””In God we trust,” said Wigglesworth. “It’s a good message.”Bailey felt the simple gift brought him so much comfort that he wanted to spread it to other sick children.Wigglesworth decided that she would start a nonprofit organization to give as many sick people the same comfort as possible. She and Bailey decided that she would be the president and he would be the vice-president.”We wanted to give away bears to give hope and comfort and joy to many,” she said.”I really did it to give Seth a purpose,” she said. “And it did. He lived a year when he was only given three months to live. He got to help give a lot of people joy.”Twenty years later, Penny Bears have touched the lives of thousands of people, Wigglesworth said. It’s mainly funded by donations, and bears are given away to various local hospitals and hospice homes.The Penny Bear Company has gone through a few different distributors but ultimately found that Gund provides the best quality of stuffed animals. They have been supplying the bears for six years.”For 10 to 15 years a lot of older people volunteered and knitted the sweaters with a rainbow heart pocket,” said Wigglesworth.Thousands of bears are ordered at a time to meet the demand, she said.”We give them to anyone with family members who have cancer or are sick,” she said. “We bring them to NanCamp.” The camp is a sponsorship for children dealing with cancer. It benefits many local communities, including Marblehead, Swampscott, Nahant, Saugus and Lynn.”I’m a hospice volunteer, so I bring a lot of them to hospice and all of the local hospitals,” Wigglesworth said.Penny Bears started as a way to give comfort to sick children and grew into something that supports all different types of people that are struggling with illness, she said.”The bears are for people aged 5 to 105 now,” she said.Friends from Wigglesworth’s church have even helped send bears to other countries. “These bears have gone all over the world,” she said.”We gave 500 bears to Haiti,” she said. “We’ve given bears to people in Guatemala, France, Chile, Argentina, and Iraq. My church group asks to bring bears with them when they go to these places.”The Penny Bear Company also makes special bears in honor of local children.”We have a Hunter bear,” she said. “It’s in honor of Hunter Craig from Marblehead who was killed in a car accident in 1999. It wears a little button that says ?please drive slowly.'””We also have a ?slow down for Allie’ bear in honor of Allie Castner who was also from Marblehead,” she said.The organization is operated entirely out of Wigglesworth’s house in Marblehead. She will be moving to Florida in October and will stay there until May of each year. She will return to the North Shore and live in Salem for the summer months. Meanwhile, she will continue working to send out bears to anyone in need of their comfort.