part0060

An international urban legend, with roots more than a century old, recently resurfaced in the United States. It has three surefire elements of drama and pathos: a dying child’s last wish, an appeal for help, and a simple way for people to contribute.

“Little Buddy,” as the story goes, is a poor Scottish lad dying of leukemia (or cancer) in a hospital near Glasgow. His last wish in life is to see his name added to the Guinness Book of World Records as the collector of more postcards than anyone else in history. And never mind that the Guinness Book of World Records has no such entry, because true believers in such legends never seem to check.

The spurious appeal for cards seems to have begun by word of mouth. From there, it went into CB broadcasts and spread into print. Soon people were sending postcards addressed simply to “Little Buddy, Glasgow” (or sometimes “Little Willy,” in Paisley or Aberdeen).

Thousands of cards (some claim “millions”) have arrived in the past few years, especially in the town of Paisley, about seven miles from Glasgow, where the sick child is most often supposed to be wasting away. But there is no such child, and there never was an official appeal for postcards.

Sometimes, tellers of the story “verify” it by saying that “Buddy” is a common nickname for people from Paisley, or that the boy’s real name is “Paul” and his CB handle is “Buddy.” (CBers and ham-radio operators do, in fact, often use nicknames, and they send postcards to verify conversations.) Some people maintain that the postcards arrived too late, and poor Little Buddy died without ever realizing how many wonderful, caring people there were in the world.

Most people hearing the story for the first time simply go ahead and send a postcard or several, and often try to persuade members of their churches, clubs, and work groups to join them in the effort.

The “Little Buddy” story began in 1982, when a truck driver in Scotland claimed that he heard of the card appeal on his citizens-band radio, although this alleged broadcast has never been verified.

European newspapers, businesses, and church groups organized campaigns to send postcards to the dying boy. A year later, when the story reached the United States, the inpouring of cards threatened to swamp some Scottish post offices. At times, the rumor has died down, but it continues to bounce back without warning.

Mark Schumacher, a stamp collector in Greensboro, North Carolina, learned how widespread and popular these postcard campaigns were when he submitted the winning bid on an auction lot described in a catalogue as a “mass of modern picture post cards” by a London auction house. He received some thirty pounds of cards—about 2,900 of them—mostly dated April or May 1983 and all addressed to “Little Buddy.” In an article in the American Philatelist for November 1988, Schumacher listed the sources of the cards: thirty-three different countries, including “nearly all of Western Europe, Malta, Zimbabwe, Japan, Malawi, Malaysia, Dubai, and the Netherlands Antilles, plus several Commonwealth countries.” Senders mentioned that they had heard of Little Buddy’s appeal for cards from newspapers, club newsletters, and radio broadcasts. Schumacher’s article contains reproductions of six sample cards that illustrate matters of philatelic interest, so it appears that the postcard collection is worth something to someone after all, even if it won’t merit mention in the Guinness Book of World Records .

Scottish postal officials have issued statements denying the story and have placed advertisements in CB magazines urging people to stop sending cards. The hobbyist magazine Postcard Collector published similar notices in October 1985 and again in August 1986. The Paisley Daily Express , which headlined a story “Breakers Boost Sick Boy’s Dream” on September 28, 1982 [“Breakers” being CB radio enthusiasts], by February 1983 was reporting a “Nightmare in the Post” as the “Little Buddy” story caused the card avalanche to begin. In April 1983, the Express reported that “Those Cards Are Still Coming in by the Hundreds!” and, in July 1985, “Little Buddy Strikes Again.”

Throughout 1986 and into the next year, the Midwest and the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania became the hot spots of the Little Buddy postcard appeals.

The Kansas City Star investigated the story that was leading dozens of Missourians to send hundreds of cards to poor Little Buddy. When the Scottish post office returned a box of postcards to a woman who donated them, she wrote to ask why. Officials sent her a replay of the disclaimers.

In March 1987, an Associated Press story reported the efforts of people around Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to grant the little lad’s dying wish. One postcard collector in Bethlehem was planning to send her entire personal hoard of more than 800 cards to the boy when she learned that the story was untrue.

There is an American antecedent to the Little Buddy story. This rumor claims that an indigent child, suffering from kidney disease, needs time on a dialysis machine. Supposedly, there is an enormous effort underway to collect enough aluminum soda- and beer-can pull tabs to pay for the life-saving measure.

Another ancestor of the Little Buddy story was located by the English folklorists Peter and Iona Opie. In their book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren , they quote a passage discovered in the Illustrated London News for May 18, 1850, that begins, “Some time since, there appeared in the public journals a statement to the effect that a certain young lady, under age, was to be placed in a convent, by her father, if she did not procure, before the 30th of April last, one million of used postage stamps.” The article goes on to say that this appeal generated huge quantities of stamps which arrived in “boxes, bales, and packages” to various English post offices.

The Opies were unable to determine whether the nineteenth-century news story had any truth behind it. They suggest that it is “either the tallest story which has appeared in the pages of that respected journal, or one of its most remarkable.”

What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that a similar story—with a British reference in it—still circulates internationally in an updated version.

My column, essentially as given above, appeared the week of May 4, 1987; but in the months to follow, Little Buddy appeals continued to circulate while further debunkings showed up in the press. In fact, on a single day one week later (May 13), The Province of Vancouver, British Columbia, published a supposed verification of the legend, while United Press International was distributing a denial. The Canadian news item traced the story moving through Air Canada’s computer system, then quoted an airline spokesperson saying, “We checked it out with British Airways, and it’s true.” But the UPI story that day called it a “scam of unknown origin” and claimed that even President Reagan had sent a card to the sick child in 1983.

Shortly afterward in 1987, I heard from a man in Honolulu who had found the Little Buddy appeal posted on a library bulletin board and had entered it on the national educational computer system before he became aware that he was circulating a legend. Two groups providing humanitarian aid to sick children, “Mail for Tots” and “Make a Wish Foundation,” were also sending out Little Buddy notices through the spring and summer.

During autumn 1987, debunkings continued to appear in every sort of medium from tabloids to respected big-city dailies. “Please don’t send a card to Buddy,” pleaded one headline, and “Little Buddy hoax swamps mails,” said another. The New York Post , on June 26, 1987, quoted an exasperated postal official in Paisley, who said, “I hope they’re going to introduce a record for the person who handles the largest volume of useless mail.” At that time, Little Buddy postcards were still flowing in, not only from the United States, but from Canada, Germany, Greece, Turkey, China, Japan, and Australia.

In September 1987, an Associated Press story debunking the Little Buddy legend in detail was widely published, and papers gave it headlines such as “Hoax about Buddy Finally Laid to Rest.” I certainly hope they’re right, but I’m not closing my files on the story yet. I’ve seen too many such legends pop up again months or even years after they seem to have disappeared.

Here’s my favorite parody response to a Little Buddytype appeal. It appeared at the end of a lengthy exchange of opinions during March 1988 on a national computer bulletin board. Participants debated, via their computer screens and modems, about whether an appeal for postcards for “David a 7 year old boy who is dying from Cancer in England” was legend or fact. Legend won, of course, since many of those on the net had encountered “Little Buddy” debunkings. Then, in a last dig at the true believers, one person added this notice: “I am dying of normal natural causes, and I would like to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the youngest person to personally own a Cray. If each of you would send all the money you can to this net address, I’ll be able to afford the down payment…. Yeah, I know it’s crass & tasteless, but at least you know it’s a hoax, right? :-) :-)”

Footnote for nonhackers: A “Cray” is the supercomputer of choice at present and extremely expensive. As for the last two little symbols, if you turn this page clockwise, they look like smile faces—the popular computer-net shorthand symbol used for marking jokes and hoaxes.