Arab Shriners receive travel fund donation

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - The Shriners are known for their generous donations to children in need of medical attention but on Monday they found themselves on the receiving end.

The German American Cub of Topeka presented the Arab Shriners with a $3,000 donation to the group’s travel fund in a ceremony Monday night at the group’s Topeka temple.

The donation was a thank you for helping Zoe Landis, a Topeka girl paralyzed in a drunk driving wreck in June of 2021.

“The German American Club was very touched because our founder Hanne Lore Herman, her great-granddaughter Zoe Landis had become paralyzed in an accident and Shriners has stepped up and helped out and taken them to Shriner’s hospital and has really helped out and given help and we wanted to do what we could to help support them,” says Melaniy Lawrence, President of the German American Club in Topeka.

The Shriners helped take Zoe to Chicago, where her great-grandmother says she received treatment and therapy.

“Zoe is doing good. She’s such a strong little girl and going to school and yeah she’s hanging in there. She’s still in the wheelchair. She will be in the wheelchair for the rest of her life. They operated on her, so she can at least use her arms, but she is such a sweetheart, such a good girl,” says Hanne Lore Herman, founder of the German American Club and great-grandmother of Zoey Landis.

The Shriners say the donation won’t go to waste.

“We have 22 hospitals and we do normally transport the kids to the nearest hospital which is St. Louis, but there are specialty care hospitals like Chicago that does a lot of the rehab work and so our travel fund gets hit pretty hard sometimes. The travel fund is very important to what we do,” says John Sidwell, Public Relations Director for the Arab Shriners.

“I am so thankful. Shriners has done so many things all over the years for kids, to help kids and they sent her to Chicago, and just took care of her,” says Herman.

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