Air Mail — Granger kids make paper planes for ailing N.Y. boy

WEST VALLEY CITY — Granger High School students' American kid origami is about to land alongside a Korean War veteran's treasure and recycled elephant poop.

The students have made some 8,000 paper airplanes for a 5-year-old boy fighting cancer in Centerville, N.Y., a tiny town between Buffalo and Rochester.

Come to find out, so have thousands of other people worldwide.

It's part of an effort to not only lift young Hunter Winship's spirits but also to break the Guinness World Record for collecting the largest number of paper airplanes. There currently is no such record-holder.

"My husband (Shawn) said he's sure there's over a million" planes sent from around the world, Hunter's mom, Cheryl Winship, told the Deseret Morning News. "Coming home and seeing all the boxes — to me, it makes me feel good that all these people care."

At the turn of the new year, Hunter was complaining of stomach pain, his mom said. But what doctors had been treating as constipation and pneumonia turned out to be Burkitt's lymphoma, which caused rapidly growing tumors in his abdomen. The boy was admitted to a Buffalo children's hospital with a tumor the size of a tennis ball. Two days later, it was the size of a cantaloupe.

Doctors started aggressive treatment, which resulted in bouts of kidney and respiratory failure, his mom said. The family felt helpless.

So a family member and cancer survivor thought of a way to lift Hunter's spirits. Winship's sister in-law recalled a program in which hospitalized children put their names on lists to receive paper airplanes to cheer them.

Cheryl Winship suggested the family take the idea a step further: Seek a world record for the most paper airplanes collected.

The mother passed her idea via e-mail. Within hours, she says she received hundreds of responses.

The message apparently circulated worldwide. A video of the quest was posted on YouTube; local news media featured Hunter's story; and the NBA's Washington Wizards brought Hunter and his family to a home game, and featured him and another child during a quarter break.

Granger High kids joined the quest through Hunter's dad, in a roundabout way.