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It's sad but, sadly, untrue. Don Ireland-Schunicht, senior vice president at Iowa Health Foundation, wishes it were true. The poignant story that has been circulating via e-mail for the past year or so moved him and others who read it to tears. Debunking the story has been painful. Alas, there is no "Dr. Teddy Stoddard" at the Stoddard Cancer Center on the Iowa Methodist Medical Center campus in Des Moines, something he's had to say hundreds of times.
Even so, you might have heard of the fictitious Dr. Stoddard, if you bothered to open one of those aggravating e-mails clogging your inbox, the ones with the telltale subject line "Fwd." Pastors have preached the moral of the story of Teddy Stoddard, some who have read of his tragic past have been moved to philanthropy and a few people have even claimed to know the lad who was spiraling toward academic disaster and social despair until the benevolent "Mrs. Thompson" stepped in and provided support that set him on a path to a prestigious oncology position in the cancer wing of Iowa Methodist.
"It's a wonderful story, and I got weepy when I read it," said IrelandSchunicht, so inundated by inquires about the e-mail that the detective in him tried to trace its origin. As best he can determine, "it sounds like two feel-good stories got merged into one," he said.
The legend of Teddy Stoddard begins:
"As she stood in front of her fifth-grade class on the very first day of school, she told tire children art untruth. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. However, that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard.
"Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that be did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could...