Craig Shergold (24 June 1979 – 21 April 2020) was a British former cancer patient who received an estimated 350 million

greeting card A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthday ...

s, earning him a place in the ''

Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

''. 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 legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

Background

In 1988 Craig Shergold began complaining of earaches. After

antibiotics An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention o ...

were unsuccessful in treating his symptoms, in 1989 doctors diagnosed him, at the age of nine, with what they considered

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

brain cancer A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and secondar ...

Greeting card campaign

Shergold's friends and relatives began a

chain letter A chain letter is a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies and pass them on to a certain number of recipients. The "chain" is an exponentially growing pyramid (a tree graph) that cannot be sustained indefinite ...

campaign requesting individuals to send greeting cards to him with the goal of beating the ''

'' for 1,000,065 greeting cards received. Craig received greeting cards from all over the world including celebrities like

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

and

Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...

. The Children's Wish Foundation became involved in the campaign in the early stages and quickly became overwhelmed by the volume of cards being received, though they later disavowed any connection with the chain letter campaigns. The campaign was successful and Shergold's name was added to the ''1991

'' as having received 16,250,692 get-well cards by May 1990, and again in the ''1992

'' as having received 33 million cards by May 1991.

Treatment successful

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 John Werner Kluge (; September 21, 1914September 7, 2010) was a German-American entrepreneur who became a television industry mogul in the United States. At one time he was the richest person in the U.S. Early life and education Kluge was bo ...

, founder of

Metromedia Metromedia (also often MetroMedia) was an American media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and controlled Orion Pictures from 1988 to 1997. Metromedia was established in 1956 after the DuMo ...

, learned of Shergold's illness and arranged for him to travel to the US for a new type of operation. He was operated on in 1991 at the

University of Virginia Medical Center The University of Virginia Health System is an academic health care center associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The health system includes a medical center (with main hospital, children's hospital, and clinic network), ...

, where a physician was able to remove virtually all of the tumor except for a benign fragment. Shergold grew into a healthy adult.

Chain letter popularity

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. Variants of the chain mail changed Shergold's name to "Craig Shelford", "Craig Stafford", "Craig Shefford", "Greg Sherwood", or, a version particularly popular in Poland, "Draing Sherold ". Another variant involves requests for

business card Business cards are cards bearing business information about a company or individual. They are shared during formal introductions as a convenience and a memory aid. A business card typically includes the giver's name, company or business aff ...

s. A related chain letter which retained Shergold's address (in a somewhat corrupted form) asked secretaries and heads of Polish public institutions and local authorities to send get-well cards to a "Harold Sarid". The

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gave their home its own

postal code A postal code (also known locally in various English-speaking countries throughout the world as a postcode, post code, PIN or ZIP Code) is a series of letters or digits or both, sometimes including spaces or punctuation, included in a postal a ...

because of the volume of mail they received. To avoid the deluge of mail, the family halted mail delivery and later moved.

Legacy

Throughout his life, he received approximately 350 million greeting cards. As an adult, he did not make any public appearances other than to express his new wish–for the mail to stop. , he continued to receive cards, sent to his old address. The

Make-A-Wish Foundation The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in the United States that helps fulfill the wishes of children with a critical illness between the ages of and 18 years old. Make-A-Wish was founded in 1980 and headqua ...

also states on their website that they do not engage in chain letters or telemarketing activities and also denies any involvement in fulfilling Shergold's original wish, stating that it was done by another wish-granting organization. Any mail that is received is forwarded to a recycling center.

In popular media

In 1993, Shergold's mother, Marion, wrote a book about her son's story entitled, ''Craig Shergold : A Mother's Story''. On 10 November 2001,

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aired a

made-for-TV movie A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...

, ''

The Miracle of the Cards ''The Miracle of the Cards'' is 2001 American made-for-television drama film distributed by Cloud Ten Pictures. It starred Kirk Cameron, Karin Konoval, Catherine Oxenberg, Peter Wingfield and Richard Thomas. It first aired on November 10, 2001 on ...

''. The movie starred

Thomas Sangster Thomas Brodie-Sangster (born 16 May 1990), also credited as Thomas Sangster, is an English actor. He is known for playing Sam in ''Love Actually'' (2003), Simon in ''Nanny McPhee'' (2005), Ferb in ''Phineas and Ferb'' (2007–2015), Jojen Reed ...

as Shergold and also featured

Kirk Cameron Kirk Thomas Cameron (born October 12, 1970) is an American actor and evangelist. He first gained fame as a teen actor playing Mike Seaver on the ABC sitcom ''Growing Pains'' (1985–1992), a role for which he was nominated for two Golden Glob ...

as a cynical reporter.

World record retired

Guinness World Records has retired the record and requested that individuals no longer respond to any requests for greeting cards.

Death

He died on April 21, 2020. Before his funeral a "Craig's song challenge" was issued to raise money for charity.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shergold, Craig 1979 births 2020 deaths Urban legends People from Carshalton World record holders Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in England