British cancer patient who received an estimated 350 million greeting cards, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
In 1988 Craig Shergold began complaining of earaches. After antibiotics were unsuccessful in treating his symptoms, in 1989 doctors diagnosed him, at the age of nine, with what they considered terminal brain cancer.
Shergold’s friends and relatives began a chain letter campaign requesting individuals to send greeting cards to him with the goal of beating the Guinness Book of World Records for 1,000,065 greeting cards received. Craig received greeting cards from all over the world including celebrities like Madonna and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Shergold’s cancer worsened. His British doctors estimated he might only have a few weeks of life remaining and suggested the family bring him home for the last few weeks. American billionaire John Kluge, founder of Metromedia, learned of Shergold’s illness and arranged for him to travel to the USA for a new type of operation. He was operated on in 1991 at the University of Virginia Medical Center, where a physician was able to remove virtually all of the tumour except for a benign fragment. Shergold grew into a healthy adult.
Even after his recovery, the chain letter continued to circulate and millions of greeting cards continued to flow to Shergold’s home. Shergold estimated that by 1998, he had received a total of 250 million cards.
The Royal Mail gave their home its own postal code because of the volume of mail they received. To avoid the deluge of mail, the family halted mail delivery and later moved.
As an adult, he did not make any public appearances other than to express his new wish–for the mail to stop.
In 1993, Shergold’s mother, Marion, wrote a book about her son’s story, Craig Shergold : A Mother’s Story. On 10 November 2001, PAX TV aired a made-for-TV movie, The Miracle of the Cards starring Thomas Sangster as Shergold and also featuring Kirk Cameron as a cynical reporter.
Craig Shergold died on 21 April 2020 at age 40 after contracting COVID-19-related pneumonia.
Variations of the plea for greeting cards on his behalf in 1989 are still being distributed through the Internet, making the plea one of the most persistent urban legends.
Link to Wikipedia biography