For the last many years (10!) I’ve had my head shaved to support children who have cancer. It has always been an amazingly rewarding experience and I sincerely think I’m a better person because of it. Despite its positive influences, I almost took an easy out this year and skipped the event, thinking "it's been an especially busy 2016, I can always do it next year, and there are plenty of other people involved.” And, let’s face it, me shaving my head perhaps isn’t really *that* interesting anymore. As I type this I realize how VERY sad that would have been for me and how I would have regretted not doing it. And a memory boiled up about something I’d read several years ago….

“Pursuant to my letter of November 9, 1959, we have decided we would like the following one line epitaph on the monument you are constructing for us:”

Thus opened my father’s letter on November 24, 1959, to Wm. B. Snelbaker & Son, Designers of High Grade Memorials. It was one of the last of numerous correspondences they had over the period of about a month, between my parents in Aruba and the company in NJ. My dad was 27, mom 26, and they were making preparations for the burial of their first child, Karen. No parent should have to go through what they did.

My father passed away in 1994, the same year my first daughter was born, while visiting us in Phoenix where my parents had come for her Christening. Several years ago when we moved my mom to a smaller and easier-to-maintain home, I became the recipient of several boxes of my dad’s files. Shortly after that, while going through some of them I came upon one which contained the sobering correspondence I mentioned above. My dad, an engineer, kept copies and records of most everything, including a folded-up, full-size drawing of the gravestone they designed for their first daughter. While sobering, I also always consider things like this important wake-up calls.

So to help continue the fight to improve survival rate for kids with cancer, for the 11th year now I’m going to shave my head as part of St. Baldrick’s Shaving the Way to Cure Kids’ Cancer. (This event serves to raise both donations – St. Baldrick's Foundation funds more in childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the US Government – and awareness.) There is the historic personal connection for me doing this (you can read more about my sister Karen at https://www.stbaldricks.org/kids/KarenAnneMay), as well as some selfish desires to do something good and to never lose touch with how blessed I’ve been. The experience of shaving one's head and meeting those going through it FOR REAL is not one you can forget.

While I’m lucky to still have a good bit of hair, my becoming purposefully bald is certainly not as newsworthy anymore. But the reason I’m doing it IS still very important and something I never want to lose sight of.

The event has snuck up on me this year and is less than 2 weeks away as I  begin my fundraising efforts!

So, plain and simple, I would love your support. Please consider clicking on the "Donate" button on this page; it's quick and easy.

I am SO jazzed to be involved again and hope you’ll be part of it too! If you’re in the Raleigh area on April 23, I encourage you to stop by the event; I promise you’ll have fun (hey, it’s a bar/grill) AND be moved.