Love of Mankind: Foley sponsors five children through Christian Children's Fund

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Three-time World Wrestling Champion Mick Foley Caine O'Rear
Richmond.com

Mick Foley is that uniquely American specimen called the professional wrestler. In his time with the WWE, the wrestling empire of Vince McMahon, Foley has wrestled under the guises of Cactus Jack, Mankind and Dude Love. He's captured the WWE championship three times, and his "Hell in a Cell" match with the Undertaker is regarded by wrestling cognoscenti as one of the great matches of all time. Along the way, Foley has suffered numerous injuries, including kidney damage, major burns, a shorn ear and eight concussions.

But Foley is more than a wrestler. He's also a novelist, a children's book author, and, perhaps most importantly, he's a major donor to the Christian Children's Fund.

On Tuesday, Foley traveled to Richmond to speak to CCF and to be inducted into their "Champion of Children Society." The international child-sponsor organization is headquartered in Richmond.

Foley, who now sponsors five children through CCF, has been a sponsor for years. The Indiana native said he grew up watching the organization's commercials with Sally Struthers. And after witnessing abject poverty firsthand during his wrestling tours throughout the world, he felt he needed to do something.

For a long time, Foley said he wasn't a very good sponsor. But all that changed when he started receiving letters from Herma Grace, a 14-year-old girl from the Philippines.

"When a little child writes to you and says, 'May God shower you with blessings for the work you do for people in need,' it would really take a hard heart not to respond to that," Foley said. "With every letter that she wrote, she was slowly but surely unscrewing the bolt on my checkbook."

Foley said that receiving one of Grace's letters is tantamount to the feeling he gets when he hears 20,000 wrestling fans chant his name.

Last month, the six-foot-two, 287-pound wrecking ball had the opportunity to visit Grace in the Philippines. Foley, who is "semi-retired" as a wrestler, still gets in the ring for a couple of WWE events each year. So, when WWE asked him to participate in one of their matches in the Manila, the capital of the Philippines, he jumped at the chance.

The Philippines is an archipelago in the South Pacific, consisting of more than seven thousand islands. Grace lived in Mindanao, the southernmost group of islands in the chain. Manila is part of the Luzon group, located in northernmost section.

Foley arranged to have Grace and her family of seven fly up to Manila. For Grace and her family, the trip gave them the opportunity to do many things for the first time, like sleep in a bed and see a movie. It was also the first time they had seen a WWE match.

"Herma Grace admitted that her favorite part of the trip was meeting me, though," Foley joked.

Foley has one other regular pen pal, a writer by the name of John Irving. After completing his first novel, "Tietam Brown," in 2003, Foley appealed to the New England author for a blurb for the book, but never heard from the man. Foley eventually received a letter from Irving, saying he didn't have time to read the book because he was working on his own book at the time. But, until this day, their correspondence continues.

"I keep thinking that every time I write to him it will be the last time I hear from him, but he comes back a week later with a letter, and it's pretty flattering. That's the exact same feeling I get from a letter from Herman Grace."

Foley now lives in Long Island with his wife and three children. The proceeds from his latest children book, "Tales from Wrescal Lane" will go toward building an early childhood and development center in the Philippines. And his earnings from the recent WWE event in Manila will help build another child center in the Philippines.