Our son, Eli, died suddenly in his sleep at the age of 21 months. To honor his memory, we have created the Read and Remember Eli Foundation. The foundation’s mission is to provide local charities and organizations with new books for toddlers and preschool children and raise funds for the Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood Program to support their goals of furthering research, providing support to, and advocacy on behalf of, families affected by SUDC. SUDC is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of a child over the age of 12 months, whereas SIDS research is focused on sudden death in infants under one year of age. Our family is participating in the SUDC research project in the hopes of learning more about what caused this tragedy and to help the research team gather information to help prevent this from impacting other families. Please visit www.sudc.org to learn more about their important work.

The Read and Remember Eli Foundation is completely not-for-profit and is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Eligible donations and the value of gifts are deductible from federal income tax. The funds raised and the books collected are distributed to local charities and to the SUDC Program. To learn more about how you can contribute to Eli's Foundation or directly to the SUDC Program, please visit our Contribute page. The first Read and Remember Eli Fundraiser and Book Drive took place on October 6, 2007 in conjunction with a Trivia Night event. Our family would like to do an annual event and book drive as a way to pay tribute to our little boy who loved storytime. Please visit our Events page to see photos and results for our first annual event. For more information about the local organizations and charities that will receive book donations, please visit the Links page. To learn more about Eli, please visit his memorial page.

Our family would like to thank everyone that provided sympathy and support to us while dealing with the loss of Eli. Most importantly, we want to thank everyone involved in organizing the Trivia Event and giving us the opportunity to keep Eli's spirit alive through good works.