A Community Serves Cake
Birthday parties were a big deal as a young child for most of us. But for one six-year-old from St. Cloud, Florida, his heart was broken on the day of his sixth birthday party. However, that quickly turned around with the help of the Osceola community and a Facebook page.
Glenn Buratti suffers from autism and was ecstatic for his birthday party in which he had invited his entire class. But unfortunately none of the 16 students RSVP’d or showed up to Glenn’s big day.
The boy’s mom, Ashlee Buratti resulted to a Facebook post on a closed community page called “Osceola Rants, Raves and Reviews List” to express her broken heart and frustrations.
Buratti wrote, “Rant… I know this might be something silly to rant about, but my heart is breaking for my son. We invited his whole class (16 kids) over for his 6th birthday party today. Not one kid came. I feel so bad for my son. He keeps asking, “When will my friends get here?” Poor kid. I feel so bad for him.”
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People in the community were touched by the situation and decided to help out. Buratti began receiving Facebook messages from strangers asking if their children could come to his birthday party. Complete strangers and their children began to show up with gifts for Glenn.
The Osceola Sheriff’s Office also saw the post and decided to help try to turn around the boy’s birthday by flying the Sheriff helicopter over the party. But that wasn’t it; the next week Sherriffs’ cars, police dogs, and fire trucks came to visit the boy and bring him more gifts.
Buratti told WMKG 6 that the response has been overwhelming and has restored her faith in her higher power and the human spirit. “The amazingness of everybody coming together for somebody they didn’t even know, a kid that didn’t have anybody come to his birthday party, just warmed my heart,” she said.
The Buratti family still has yet to hear back from any of the families or students that were originally invited to Glenn’s birthday party. But Buratti says that Glenn hasn’t stopped smiling since his sixth birthday party.
