37 Next morning, I went to the Market Office, locked myself in and started to plan a public appeal. I called a special meeting of the Lions Club, and explained that market involvement was not on, but a public appeal was! Everyone wished me good luck, and offered to support the new challenge. I was then confident to tell the boy’s mother of the change in arrangements. I asked Mick O’Brien to support the new appeal as a special favour. I thought that, because the Committee contained all Italian names, we needed to have an English name as well. Mick kindly accepted and understood my reasoning, so we made him a temporary member of the Lions Club. My next job was to organise the appeal launch. I hired the restaurant at the Carlton Football Club, and asked the parents for a photo of their son. At first, the mother was reluctant, but I convinced her it was most important. I had four hundred copies made, and sent them out to corporations for major sponsorship at $1,000 each. My next job was to contact the media for the launch, but the editor of the ‘Fresh Industry’ Newspaper, Robert, suggested he would do that, because he knew how to approach it, so I left it up to him. One day, I got a phone call from one of the main Doctors at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Somehow he knew I was launching an appeal for the boy, and he told me it was wrong to have an appeal for an individual, and it should be for all those in the same situation. I replied that it was already on the way, and it would be impossible to change the format. As the day got closer to the launch, two other members of the Lions Club, Mick Sgro and Tim Varapodio and I were talking about it and, during our chat, we realised that the editor of the ‘Fresh Industry’ Newspaper had not contacted the media as promised, to invite them to the launch. The three of us decided it was too late to invite them, so we concentrated on the ’Fresh Industry’ people. I went along with that, although naturally disappointed that Bob had let us down. I then left Mick and Tim, and walked alone back to my office. During the walk, another message came to my mind to go ahead and send invitations to the media - television, radio and newspapers. So I wrote letters in my simple hand-written style, because my office people had left for the day.