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Dolphin, girl get along swimmingly

Posted Mar 5, 2010 by Beth Gaddis

Updated Mar 5, 2010 at 02:41 PM

Jessica Rendleman’s love of dolphins began when she was just a baby fighting cancer. That love inspired an essay that led to the trip of a lifetime – to visit a special dolphin at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

The North Carolina girl had a rough start to her life. Before she was born, doctors discovered she had kidney problems. One kidney had to be removed when she was 2 weeks old. Then doctors discovered she had cancer in the other kidney.

“They told me there was a 70 percent chance that she wouldn’t live to be 5 years old,” her mom, Paula, said. “And now she’s about to turn 10.”

The Rendlemans, who live in Greensboro, would travel six hours each way to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for surgeries and follow-ups. While in Baltimore, the Rendlemans always took Jessica to National Aquarium to take her mind off her illness.

In October, her mother received an e-mail with a link to a video about a dolphin with a prosthetic tail at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The e-mail invited children to write essays about how animals touched their lives for Scholastic’s “Meet Winter the Dolphin Contest.”

“My parents wanted me to have something fun to do instead of just being scared of the bad things,” the third-grader wrote in her essay.

“They took me to the Baltimore aquarium to see the fish for the first time. I went to the dolphin show and from the first time I saw them I loved them. For a few years I had to go back for checkups and tests and I would also go see the dolphins. They made me smile when I had lots of bad tests and surgeries to go through.” Read the essay

Scholastic marketing assistant Jessica Gregorek judged more than 500 contest entries.

“Jessica’s was just a standout, though,” Gregorek said. “It was just so amazing how these dolphins touched her.”

“I know it sounds weird, but sometimes it felt like they took the pain away,” Jessica said today during a phone interview.

There were only smiles this morning when Jessica got to meet Winter.

“My favorite part was when I got to kiss Winter,” she said.

She also got to swim with the dolphin, lunch with dolphin trainers and get a behind-the-scenes tour of the aquarium.

“It’s been really amazing,” her mom said. “It’s an opportunity that you know you could never give your child yourself.”

As a cancer survivor, Jessica has beaten the odds and is focused on the future.

“I want to be a marine animal veterinarian and work with whales, porpoises and sea lions.”

What about dolphins?

“Dolphins, too.”

Staff photo by WALLY PATANOW

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