In Canton, Georgia, a retired healthcare executive and his wife spent part of a recent Saturday assembling a wooden bed frame on the floor of a family’s living room, then filling it with a new mattress, sheets, pillows, blankets, and a comforter — all so a child who had been sharing a mattress with siblings or parents could finally sleep alone. Dan and Nancy Kohl started the Cherokee County chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, the national nonprofit whose mission is summed up in four words: no kid sleeps on the floor.
From Retirement to a New Mission
Until the Kohls applied to start it, Cherokee County had no Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter at all, according to CBS News Atlanta. Dan Kohl previously served as CEO of private-equity-backed healthcare companies, and after he and Nancy retired, the pair began looking for ways to give back, the outlet reports. They eventually landed on Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit founded in 2012 by Luke Mickelson in Kimberly, Idaho, after he found local children sleeping on the floor and built the charity’s first bed himself, in his garage, according to Wikipedia.
Cherokee County has roughly 275,000 residents, and using the national nonprofit’s own estimate that about 3% of children lack a bed, that works out to around 8,000 children locally who may be sleeping without one, per the CBS News Atlanta report. Dan Kohl told the station that even if the estimate overstated the problem by 75%, that would still leave 2,000 children without a bed in the county — a number he and Nancy felt was too large to ignore.
Recruiting a Community to Build
To get the chapter off the ground, the Kohls recruited community organizations, friends, neighbors, civic groups, nonprofits, and families, the station’s report notes. Among the volunteers were members of the Young Men’s Service League, which includes mothers and sons who volunteer together. Two of them, Kirby and Charlie, worked at the bed build; Charlie said he could help children who lack something most people have, while Kirby said giving back and spending time volunteering together were central to the effort.
The Kohls’ own grandchildren pitched in too, helping brand the wooden beds and make deliveries, according to the same account. Their daughter helps vet the families who apply. Nancy Kohl said sleeping is important for everyone — a point underscored by what social workers have told the couple: some children fall asleep at their desks in school simply because they don’t get enough rest at home.
Why Rest Matters So Much
That classroom exhaustion lines up with what public health researchers have found nationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked insufficient sleep among children and adolescents to higher risks of obesity, mental health problems, behavioral issues, and lower academic performance, according to the CDC. Separate CDC data found that 35% of U.S. children aged 4 months to 14 years experienced short sleep duration on an average day or weeknight during 2020-2021…