Andy Mackie of Washington state had undergone nine heart operations and was taking 15 different drugs when he decided to quit. He gave up the medicine and started using the money he saved to give away harmonicas and music lessons to local kids. Mackie figured it would be a gift before he died.
"I really thought it was the last thing I could ever do," he says. And when he didn't die the next month, he bought a few hundred more. Harmonicas in hand, he explains, "I just started going from school to school." It's now 11 years and 13,000 harmonicas later. The now 70-year-old Mackie also makes and buys other musical instruments for interested children, and arranges for his older students to give lessons to younger kids. Mackie says, "I tell them music is a gift, you give it away - you give it away and you get to keep it forever." -Full story here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/01/assignment_america/main4984493.shtml
