Ben's Bells

63,000 Wind Chimes with a message

This is the Kindness Magnet newsletter — kindness habits and stories you can use to attract more opportunities, better health, relationships, and happiness. I’m Heather Johnston Brebaugh, author and kindness advocate.

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I can’t remember when I last read a story that begins with sadness and ends with so much kindness.

Ben Maré

In 2002, little Ben Maré was not quite three when he caught croup, normally a childhood disease that lasts just a few days.  Ben, however, passed away, leaving behind his mother, Jeannette. 

To deal with her grief, she, along with many friends, spent hours near the kiln in her Tucson back yard, crafting ceramic wind chimes and mending broken hearts with conversation and kind words. 

Birth of Ben’s Bells

Over that first year, Jeanette could feel the small acts of kindness from her friends helping her heart heal.  She decided to make more chimes and hang them throughout the community, along with messages about kindness, to help others who might be dealing with sadness.  Ben’s Bells was born.

On March 29, 2003, the first anniversary of Ben’s death, friends hung 400 colorful bells and messages around Tucson, ringing in sounds of kindness that spread to local media and echoed throughout schools and across the city.  Thousands of volunteers began making Ben’s Bells and hanging them twice a year.

Shooting of Gabby Giffords

Nearly eight years later, on January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords was shot.  She suffered severe brain damage.  Many of you may remember. I know I do. The entire Tucson community was in shock.  Volunteers hung 1,400 chimes and messages around the city, helping the community heal as Jeannette’s friends had once helped her heal, and unintentionally, bringing national attention to Ben’s Bells. 

Today, Ben’s Bells continue to spread kindness, with chapters in Tucson, Phoenix, and Connecticut.

Birth of Kind Campus 

In addition to the chimes, the now non-profit created a kindness curriculum for Pre-K – 12, called Kind Campus (originally Kind Kids).  Wildly successful, the curriculum is being used by more than 500 schools in Southern Arizona, Phoenix, Connecticut, New York, other U.S. locations, Canada, Mexico, and Australia.  The curriculum is provided for free to any registering school.  As a former teacher, I would love to have had this available years ago.

Defeating Bullies

One parent, Dev Sethi, discovered Kind Campus when his 9 year old daughter came home and started writing thank you notes to classmates who had been kind to her.    

“Ben’s Bells created an environment of empathy, where being kind is expected behavior,” Sethi said. “Now kids who try to bully others are looked at as being outside the norm. Ben’s Bells allows kids to experience what it feels like to be kind to someone else and have others be kind to them.”

Birth of Kind Colleagues

Ben’s Bells recently launched Kind Colleagues, a kindness curriculum for businesses.  That program has already had nearly 19,000 participants.

All of this because of one little boy’s mother, who decided to turn her grief into kindness.