A ‘sweet’ donation: Foundation donates children’s wagons, art supplies to CRH pediatric unit in memory of Emma Sweet

Mike Wolanin | The Republic Emma Sweet’s uncle Bryan O’Neal brings wagons, art supplies and games from the Emma Grace Foundation into Columbus Regional Hospital in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. The supplies were donated to the pediatric unit at the hospital. The Emma Grace Foundation was started in honor of Emma Sweet, a 2-year-old, that was killed when her father Jeremy Sweet crashed his truck into East Fork White River while under the influence of drugs.

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Bryan O’Neal had no need to even stop and think. He knew immediately how his late 2-year-old niece, Emma Grace Patricia Sweet, would have reacted if she had been there with him Wednesday at Columbus Regional Hospital amid four children’s wagons parked in the building’s lobby.

“She would be pulling them, pushing them, and climbing all over them,” O’Neal said, standing next to the bright red carts donated by the memorial Emma Grace Foundation to the hospital’s pediatric ward.

The foundation, launched by the child’s mom, Linsey Sweet, last year, is meant to help youngsters in a myriad of ways while simultaneously reminding people of Emma’s heart soft enough that she sometimes wanted to give her toys to others. The child died tragically in an accident Nov. 28 in Columbus.

This marks the nonprofit’s first major gift one that relatives said is hard to precisely quantify because they didn’t keep track of the cost of the wagons, toys, games and enough crayons to color the world happy. O’Neal came up with the wagon idea after seeing the ones used to transport tykes at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.

Neither O’Neal nor Sweet knew that the local hospital’s only existing pediatrics wagon was old, broken, and no longer in use.

Emily Linke, a pediatric registered nurse at the hospital, saw the wagons as especially practical and thoughtful.

“It’s definitely nice to have new ones,” Linke said.

For the complete story and more photos, see Friday’s Republic.