A Japanese legend says anyone who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted one wish.

And though 10-year-old David Heard knows it's the stuff of folklore, he wants to gather 5,000 colorful paper cranes to brighten the five pediatric wards where he has been treated for terminal pediatric cancer.

With the help of the students at Lafayette College and East Stroudsburg University, he only has 3,000 to go.

Well, make that 2,999.

"Look, I actually did it!" David exclaimed, beaming up at his mom, Susan Heard, as he finished his first crane Monday morning in the pediatric ward of Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg. "I made a teeny tiny crane 80 percent myself."

"So, we just need to bring home 20 percent of a Lafayette student," Susan Heard said.

"Maybe just an arm," the witty fifth-grader shot back with a grin.

Two years ago, the Easton boy was diagnosed with stage IV neuroblastoma, a rare and often deadly cancer of the nervous system that strikes about 750 children a year.

David has undergone intensive treatment at LVH, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City. But he relapsed in July after six months in remission.

David's desire to fill the five wards with cranes came after a family friend mentioned an upcoming performance of "A Thousand Cranes" at Lafayette.

The play is based on the true story of 12-year-old Sadako Sasaki of Japan, whose story has made her an international symbol of resilience and peace.

Sadako developed leukemia after the atomic bombing of her hometown of Hiroshima during World War II. In the play, she attempts to fold 1,000 paper cranes in hopes that her disease will disappear, but dies before she can finish. Her friends and family make the rest.

The Heards, who live on College Hill, eagerly read the book, then saw the play.

For Susan Heard and her husband Tom, seeing the play with David helped open a difficult dialogue.

"He's terminally ill," Susan Heard said. "It's hard to find books that are uplifting that say, Here is what's happening."

Sadako found hope and purpose in making the simple paper birds, she said.

"It was something she could do," she said.

Giving other sick children hope was something her son could do. And now, as word spreads, more and more people want to fold cranes in David's name.

"If you want something to happen, you can usually make it happen," his mother said.

David has already collected 2,000 cranes from the sets of Lafayette College Theater's presentation of Sadako's story earlier this month and East Stroudsburg Department of Theatre's depiction last week.

On Monday, four Lafayette College students and professor Mary Jo Lodge, who directed the play, made the first delivery, carrying heavy bunches of multi-hued cranes that were strung together on transparent fishing line.

The Lafayette students included Brandi Porter, a sophomore from Maryland, and Dana Pardini, a junior from Whitehall Township, both of whom starred in the college's production, as well as Emma Kent, a freshman from Riverhead, N.Y., and Elise Buffinton, a freshman from Lewisburg, Union County, who helped fold cranes in their seminar class with Lodge.

The group hung the strands of birds from the ceiling, then instructed David and other kids in the unit in the Japanese art of origami.

Lodge taught herself the complicated folds from a set of written instructions.

"It took hours the first time," she said.

But with the deft, practiced hands of Lafayette students, it took mere minutes for the colorful little birds to emerge on the kid-sized table at the hands of David, his mom and leukemia patient Simon Ernst, 7, of Emmaus.

First, the pizza fold, the boys chorused raucously as they folded the 3x3-inch paper squares into triangular pizza-slice shapes. Then, the taco fold.

"Now the hot-dog fold!" yelled Simon, a first-grader at St. Ann School in Emmaus, eliciting the laughter of the Lafayette students helping him.

Before long David finished four miniature cranes, which his mom scattered in his disheveled blond hair, pronouncing his messy locks "a bird's nest."

Those cranes were then added to a growing plastic bag of another set of a thousand cranes.

Only 2,980 to go.

devon.lash@mcall.com

610-820-6613

If You Want To Help

Mail your paper cranes to the Heards, 130 W. Lafayette St., Easton 18042