ROBERTSDALE, Ala. – The family of Sam Byrd was set to hold a benefit yard sale the first weekend in September near their home in Silverhill to help offset his medical expenses.

But a storm brewing in the Gulf delayed their plans and not only pushed the benefit back a month, but forced them to change the location.

“We had to pack everything up and put it in storage,” said Darlene Rockwell, one of the event’s organizers. “We’re basically going to have the sale at the storage facility with most of the items still in storage.”

The event is now scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15 and will be held at B & B Mini Storage on Greeno Road in Fairhope.

In September, a week before the original benefit, LaTisha Byrd, mother of Sam, who crossed the halfway point of his first year of life on Wednesday sat down for an interview at The Independent.

“He is such great, wonderful baby,” Byrd said. “He is a happy baby.”

Before Sam was born, LaTisha and her husband Richard, residents of Silverhill, didn’t know there was anything wrong. As far as they knew, Sam was a healthy, 6-pound, 7-ounce baby boy when he was born on April 5. It wasn’t until about five hours later, LaTisha said, they received the news.

“He was born at 2:30, they came and told me at about 7:30 that he had a heart murmur,” she said.

By 9:30, Sam was rushed to USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Mobile, where he would spend the next nine days. Sam would ultimately be diagnosed with tetralogy fallot, a heart defect.

“There’s a lot more to it, but basically he was born with a 5 millimeter hole in his heart,” LaTisha said, “and his pulmonary artery was restricted. Basically when he would get stressed and start to cry, he would turn blue.”

At 10 weeks old, Sam was taken to UAB Medical Center in Birmingham where he underwent open heart surgery.

“It was a full-blown open heart surgery with chest tubes, a pace maker and all those things,” she said.

Sam would spend another nine days at UAB before being released and so far, the surgery has done its job.

“He’s great now,” LaTisha Byrd said. Doctors say he might have to have another heart valve replacement surgery in about 10 years or so. “It really depends on how well his heart does between now and then.”

And while the Byrds are happy to have their baby home, they are faced with mounting medical bills.

“I’ve learned a lot about insurance over the past five months,” LaTisha said.

While insurance has paid around $140,000 in medical expenses, the Byrds have had to pay nearly $9,000 out of their own pockets, she said, and still have yet to receive notice from UAB on how much they will end up owing for his surgery.

LaTisha works as a postal employee in Daphne. Richard quit his job as a truck driver for Buffalo Rock/Pepsi in Mobile to help take care of Sam and works part-time in real estate. The mounting debt has been somewhat overwhelming.

But thanks to the generosity of family, friends and even strangers, the Byrds will have a chance to offset some of those costs.

While the yard sale has moved from a vacant property in Augusta Place Subdivision in Silverhill to the new location in Fairhope, much of the donated items, including baby clothes, children’s clothes, all sizes of adult clothes, books, household items, furniture and toys, remain up for grabs.

Proceeds from the event will go to pay Sam’s medical bills not covered by insurance, she said.

And while Sam continues on the road to recovery, he will forever have a reminder of his ordeal, a surgery scar that runs the length of his chest.

“He has gone through quite an ordeal,” LaTisha Byrd said, “and he has the battle scars and a testament to start life with.”