Fort Myers Beach rallies around Cape Coral mom to help buy wheelchair accessible van
LEE COUNTY, Fla. —
“How can you be mad about showing up for work and getting to look at sailboats all day long?” Amanda Brown said.
Amanda works on Fort Myers Beach, but when she’s home in Cape Coral, she’s spending time with her 6-year-old daughter, Amara.
“Her condition is called Pelizaeus-Merzbacher-like disease, and we did not get a diagnosis until she was 3-and-a-half,” Amanda said. “The strain that it puts on my back and my body just in general, we had to switch over from the van I did have, because it was breaking down.”
A couple of weeks ago, Amanda created a GoFundMe page to raise money for a new van. People on Fort Myers Beach took notice.
“Amanda sent me an email asking if I’d share her GoFundMe page, which I said, sure, I’ll share that,” said Ed Ryan from Beach Talk Radio. “It was a thousand here, a thousand there, and before we knew it, it was $10,000.”
The community raised enough for Amanda to accept a new wheelchair accessible van. For a town that’s lost so much, somehow, Fort Myers Beach hasn’t lost heart.
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