Local florist Matthew McDonald, president of the South Carolina unit of the Teleflora flower wire service, unloads his delivery truck outside Brookview Health Care Center on Tuesday morning. Through the Teleflora-sponsored "Make Someone Smile Week," nearly 100 flower arrangements were delivered to the nursing home residents. A group of volunteers set out Tuesday morning to make someone smile during an event named, aptly enough, "Make Someone Smile Week."

Some of the biggest smiles, however, would be found on the faces of the volunteers who made the event happen.

Make Someone Smile Week is an annual charitable event sponsored by the flower wire service Teleflora, through which florists, flower growers and volunteers spread cheer in hospitals and nursing homes by delivering free flower arrangements.

The event has been held nationwide since 2000. Approximately 40,000 flower arrangements will be given out this week.

In Gaffney this year, local efforts in the charitable endeavor benefited residents of the Brookview Health Care Center nursing facility, where nearly 100 flower arrangements were delivered Tuesday.

Local florist Matthew McDonald and Marshall Goforth, president of the Gaffney Garden Club, delivered flower arrangements at Brookview Health Care Center on Tuesday morning as part of the Teleflora flower wire service-sponsored "Make Someone Smile Week." In photo, they present one of the nearly 100 arrangements delivered to Brookview to resident Ruby Holland. Matthew McDonald, a local florist who serves as the president of the South Carolina unit of Teleflora, smiled from ear to ear as he unloaded his delivery truck packed with arrangements carefully put together by volunteers from the Gaffney Garden Club and staff members from Brookview.

"The project is about giving back," he said. "It's about giving back to those who have given to us throughout their lives."

"We delivered to every room in the building," said Debbie McCraw, admissions director at the facility. "We had a lot of smiles."

Teleflora donated the "Be Happy" mugs the arrangements were placed in while Tommy's Wholesale in Florence donated the flowers.

Manpower to put all those arrangements together was donated, too.

About eight members of the Gaffney Garden Club pitched in, said Marshall Goforth, the club's president. McCraw, the admissions director at Brookview, and Lori Simmons, the facility's marketing director, also chipped in to help arrange the flowers and deliver them room by room Tuesday.

As part of the event, McDonald also planned to take stuffed animals to young patients at Upstate Carolina Medical Center on Tuesday evening.

Even before all the arrangements were delivered Tuesday, McDonald was already thinking about next year's event and which facilities could benefit.

"We'll be happy to do it again next year and, hopefully, get even more people involved as well as give more away," he said.