St. Baldrick’s Foundation
One day, when I was in college, my future husband asked me how much I’d be willing to donate to his friend, Sean if he shaved his head completely bald. Apparently, Sean needed some money, and in the mind of a nineteen-year-old guy, this seemed like a perfectly appropriate idea. What’s more, it worked. In addition to walking away with a bald head, Sean garnered a few hundred dollars. I recall that story with fondness as I now realize it was a harbinger of my involvement with the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.
St. Baldrick’s exists solely to raise money for pediatric cancer research, and since its inception, has funded more than 1,300 grants in 29 countries. The statistics are certainly impressive, but the story behind the foundation’s origin reads like a real-life fairy tale. I have always wondered about that monumental day on March 17, 2000 when Tim Kenny, John Bender and Enda McDonnell challenged their friends to give money to see them shave their heads. Jim Brady’s Pub in downtown Manhattan provided the setting as many of their fellow colleagues were sure to be there for the annual reinsurance industry’s St. Patrick’s Day noon gathering. The men decided that the proceeds of the shot-gun event would go to a great cause–the Children’s Oncology Group.
Flash forward to this past April 2018, when I was fortunate to be a guest at a St. Baldrick’s dinner to hear about the latest in pediatric cancer research. I had the honor of meeting dedicated physicians, committed board members, and to my utter delight, an “original” shavee! This man, named Adam, shaved his head at Jim Brady’s in 2000. I eagerly peppered him with questions about that inspiring day which he recalled with great emotion. There were just a few thousand dollars in pledges, and when the donors started showing up to see the hair come off, a couple guys headed down the street to Duane Reed to purchase razors and shaving cream. Devoid of a barber and the proper hair-cutting accoutrements, the men shaved each other’s heads leaving sporadic tufts of hair on painful, bleeding scalps. But the atmosphere was electric, and as more and more people heard about what was going on at Jim Brady’s and poured into the pub, so did the cash totaling $104,000 for pediatric cancer research. Many attendees did not return to their offices that afternoon, and most of the nineteen shavees left Jim Brady’s Irish pub–pints of Guinness in hand–to search for a barber to finish the job. Four years later, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation was created, and as of today, it has raised 258 million dollars for research grants responsible for the latest drugs and the studies to combat the detrimental long-term health effects of cancer treatment on children.
I am inspired by those men—so pure of heart—who challenged themselves and others to give back by just having a hilariously great time at the neighborhood bar, never imaging that a few beers and a package of razors would give more hope to children battling this insidious disease than almost anything else ever would.
For more information on the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, go to www.stbaldricks.org
