Harvest of Hope: Flower Seeds a Tribute to Cancer Victims. Nancy Regent. The Advocate. August 19, 1996. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Kevin Donahoe hopes the thousands of four-o’clock seeds he has mailed in little packets will be a symbol of hope for cancer patients around the world. His father died of cancer two years ago, asking to see his beloved four-o’clocks shortly before he died.

Donahoe went to his father’s back yard a week after the funeral to find a yellow flower blooming on one of the four-o’clock plants. “It was then that the idea came to me that I wanted to share his favorite plant with family and friends,” Donahoe said. “The only problem is that all of his friends had already been given seeds.” Seeds from the backyard bushes have been planted in about 150 cities and more than a dozen countries since Donahoe first had the idea two years ago.

His ambitious letter-writing campaign and articles in the national postal system’s publication, Focus, have spring boarded his idea into something “a helluva lot bigger than I ever thought it would be,” Donahoe said. The flowers bloom in magenta, white and yellow, but never before 4 p.m., hence the name four-o’clock. After he started sending letters to postmasters, Donahoe’s story was picked up for the postal systems’s publication. “That’s when the tribute really took off,” Donahoe said.

Donahoe methodically picks the thousands of pea-sized seeds from his father’s bushes, mailing them to postmasters and governors in all 50 states. He first asked that the seeds be planted before July 17, 1994, the date of his father’s 66th birthday. His father died in April 1994.

The tribute keeps growing. Donahoe said he doesn’t know if the seeds have been planted at the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion. He sent a new packet of seeds to Gov. Murphy J. “Mike” Foster after his inauguration. He is asking residents in Baton Rouge to plant his father’s seeds because the campaign has “not really taken off in Louisiana.”

His letters have drawn responses from George Stephanopolous, senior adviser to President Clinton; first lady Hilly Rodham Clinton, several governors, and a number of U.S. Ambassadors oversees.

Walter Mondale, no ambassador to Tokyo, said in a letter to Donahoe in March that he will plant the seeds in Japan. “Your effort is certainly a tribute to your father, but also a testimony to the positive impact of flowers in our lives,” he wrote.

Donahoe has received a number of personal letters, perhaps the most touching from employees of the postal system. “When I heard about you, I immediately thought about my mom and how difficult her cancer was,” writes Lisa Pettyjohn, of Michigan, whose mother’s breast cancer was caught in time for treatment. “I was impressed by your love for your dad. I planted some of your seeds at my house and gave some to my mom and dad.” “The seeds that have sprouted are a tremendous source of inspiration,” she writes.

Donahoe’s father, Jim, a New Orleans longshoreman, passed his love of gardening to his son. The younger Donahoe is a member of the Louisiana Fern Society and cultivates bromeliads, African violets, ferns and orchids that fill the greenhouse his father used.

The younger Donahoe holds several degrees from Tulane University and has a master’s degree in communications from Northeast Louisiana University. He is a former director of a lab that cloned plants, and he works on the four-o’clock campaign in his spare time.

“I want to see seeds distributed at every botanical garden,” he said. “Wherever cancer patients go I want to share the four-o’clock seeds with them.”