In addition to the restaurant’s usual smiling staff, dozens of people from area organizations and from Family and Children’s Services and local media volunteered
to spend McHappy Day serving hamburgers and fries to hungry customers. “There’s a lot going on,†said restaurant owner Wendy Perry. “We’ve had tremendous support today. … All of our community partners and neighbours came out.†It meant a lot to Perry, and her husband Ron, she said. It also meant a lot to Ronald McDonald House in Hamilton, the organization that benefited from donations collected throughout the day, as well as $1 from the sale of each Happy Meal, Big Mac and other items at the restaurants. Phil Mitterhauser, his wife Shelley, and their children Sarah and Melinda joined the volunteers for the event. After learning firsthand how vital the charity that benefited from the special day is, there was no other place they would rather be. “You don’t know until the day it happens,†said Mitterhauser.
A little more than a year ago, Sarah spent three weeks at McMaster Children’s Hospital, including a week and a half in the intensive care unit, undergoing treatment for an arteriovenous malformation and brain aneurysm.