The British politician and historian James Bryce once said, "The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it." For a Glens Falls family struck by the tragic death of their infant son, books are the mechanism they're using to keep his memory alive, and help others cope with the same struggles they went through. Our Matt Hunter has the story.

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On February 16, 2009, Cameron Quartiers was born 16 weeks early.
Weighing just 1 lb 3 oz., doctors didn't think he'd survive the next 48 hours. Miraculously, he hung on and made it through heart surgery three weeks later, but it was only the beginning of the long road ahead.

"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," Cameron's father Jason said. "It was a very stressful."

Placed in an incubator and attached to a series of tubes and machines, the Quartiers were forced to stand back and watch as doctors frantically tried to save their son.

"I sat there and I saw doctors and nurses and I could clearly see what their role was in his care, but I just really didn't know what I could do," Cameron's mother Sara Quartiers said.

An elementary school teacher, Sara did what came naturally; she read to him.

"He had pushed his head toward where the noise was coming from and from there, we just kept reading," she said. "The first time we started to read to him, his primary nurse actually noted his saturation levels, which measure the level of oxygen he's getting, actually increased."

From there, Cameron's condition improved. His recovery was so profound, his parents took him home after 213 days in Albany Medical Center's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), but sadly his short life would come to an end a month later.

"I think we were just hopeful that we would get our happy ending, but you don't always get to chose, I guess, your happy ending," Sara said.

Tuesday, on what would have been Cameron's first birthday, the Quartiers attempted to rewrite that ending. Launching "Project: Cameron's Story," the couple is helping other families going through the same struggle, by donating books to the Albany Medical Center NICU.

"The NICU always talks about treating the whole family and that's what we're trying to do," Sara said.

Helping out is simple. Just by purchasing a book at a participating store and placing it in the Project: Cameron's Story drop box, you can ensure families going through the same struggle will have a book waiting for them at the hospital.

As the Quartiers share Cameron's favorite stories with friends and family, they're making sure not to close the book on his story.

"It's bittersweet and it's tough to read the stories that we read to him and enjoyed with him," Sara said. "But it does it makes us think back to those times and how much he enjoyed them and I wouldn't trade that for anything."