Lisbon girl receives room makeover from the Children’s Dream Factory of Maine.
LISBON – Nine-year-old Holly Hogan wakes each morning behind a new veil that surrounds her new bed in a new bedroom.
“Am I dreaming a dream?” she asks herself.”Is this real?”
Three days after her bedroom makeover, there’s still a moment of disorientation before the weekend memories come flooding back.
“I feel like I’m a princess,” Holly said. “You don’t want to get up.”
Last weekend, volunteers from the Children’s Dream Factory of Maine redecorated Holly’s bedroom. They painted over the paneled walls, replaced the carpeting and brought in new furniture.
The 16-year-old charity grants wishes to children with serious illnesses. They buy in-ground pools, playgrounds and trips to Disney World. Holly, who has juvenile diabetes, was ready to go to the Florida theme park when war erupted. She and her mother, Sandra, didn’t want to fly anymore.
So the charity talked with Holly and suggested the room makeover. There was more to it, though.
Since Holly likes the spotlight, the Dream Factory brought a professional video team to the makeover and created a kind of “While You Were Out” video, a reference to the popular cable TV show in which a team redecorates a room while someone is on a weekend getaway.
While volunteers decorated, Holly spent the weekend with her mother, Sandra, and her cousin Bethany Bernier, 8. The charity sent them on their own weekend getaway, to Cape Elizabeth’s Inn by the Sea.
“They spoiled Holly unbelievably,” Sandra Hogan said. “It was nonstop, whatever she wanted.”
The organization took the girls and Sandra to arcades in the Portland area, treated them to dinner and returned them to Lisbon Sunday morning in a limousine.
Holly knew there would be changes to her room. But the result was bigger than she imagined.
“I was really amazed,” said the Lisbon Elementary School third-grader. “I picked out colors. But there was a lot more.”
A professional decorator bathed the girl’s room in lavender and mauve. They gave her a new desk, which they moved into her closet area. They hung the veil with purple beads from an iron frame around the full-sized bed.
“It’s the kind of room that every girl dreams of,” Sandra said. “It will last through high school.”
Video cameras were waiting for Holly when she stepped inside and gasped.
“I never imagined that they’d do all that,” she said Wednesday. “It was so cool.”
That moment and others from the weekend will be part of Holly’s video, to debut at the Children’s Dream Factory annual golf tournament. It is scheduled for Friday, June 13, at the Val Halla Golf Course in Cumberland.
Since it was created in 1987, the all-volunteer charity has granted dreams to more than 150 children. Nationally, the movement has benefited more than 25,000 children.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
