Metro Roundup: Ryan Shines Burn Foundation growing ‘deep and wide’ as it helps children, families

Ron and Dawn Hirn of Mountain Brook lost their 7-year-old son, Ryan, in a 2001 car accident. The wreck also left burns on their bodies and on their son Tyler, one of Ryan’s three brothers.

However, the family managed to create something positive from this horrible event.

They started a nonprofit in 2004 to solicit donations for children affected by burns and created a second, larger nonprofit — the Ryan Shines Burn Foundation — in 2016.

The family has used the foundation’s activities, including numerous camps and special events, to aid the process of emotional and psychological healing for burn victims, family members and firefighters.

The foundation is also “growing deep and wide,” Dawn Hirn said. “We’re growing deep because we sink our roots deep into the lives of our kids and our firefighters, and wide because we plan to have Ryan Shines in every state.” Burn children and firefighters from five new states will take place in the foundation’s events in 2020, she said.

As always, these efforts are inspired by Ryan. “He was the light of our eyes, and anything good that is coming from this, I believe, is inspired by his memory and presence,” Dawn Hirn said.

The work is also rewarding because the foundation works with pediatric burn survivors. “Ryan was not so fortunate,” she said.

The nonprofit held its first annual “A Walk with Heroes” gala fundraiser at The Club in February to raise money for its numerous “Catching Courage” events.

“These events are for pediatric burn survivors and firefighters to come together for healing and bonding through team-building outdoor adventures,” Dawn Hirn said.

At the gala, the foundation presented the Ryan Hirn Award for Excellence to Benjamin and Luanne Russell for their service to children.

The Russells founded Children’s Harbor, a large campus on Lake Martin, in 1989, and donated money in 2001 to build the Children’s Harbor Family Resource and Counseling Center at the Benjamin Russell Hospital for Children in Birmingham.

The foundation will host several Catching Courage events in 2020, including an all-day bass fishing outing at Lake Mitchell in May.

From July 6-11, the organization will host an annual retreat in the Florida Keys with 40 firefighters and 10 pediatric burn survivors from six states.

“The kids swim with the dolphins and manta rays, snorkel the reefs, back-country and deep sea fish and eat like there’s no tomorrow,” Dawn Hirn said.

But the most important aspect of the event is the bonding between children and firefighters, she said.

“The special bond between a firefighter and a burn child is very unique,” she said. “They mutually seek closure, encouragement and courage from the other.”

The foundation will host the second annual Catching Courage Family Camp — a weekend of team-building, workshops and healing for burn survivors, firefighters and family members — at Children’s Harbor on Lake Martin from Sept. 25-27.

All of the people who attend the camp “have been touched by fire in one way or another,” Dawn Hirn said.

For example, rates of PTSD and divorce “run rampant” among firefighters, she said. The event offers workshops regarding spousal PTSD for the wives of firefighters.

The camp, which includes staff from the Auburn University Department of Psychology, is meant to help the parents and siblings of burned children deal with the guilt they often feel.

“Every parent wants to protect their children from everything, and when something traumatic happens, there’s always the guilt that you didn’t, as a parent, protect them well enough,” she said.

The lives of siblings are also “forever changed” in accidents like these, she said.

For more information, call 956-821-9633 or go to ryanshines.com.