Georgia’s CURE Childhood Cancer marks 50 years of helping families
On a brilliantly sunny Thursday afternoon, 3-year-old Damien barreled through the Sunshine Park and Healing Garden, a cheerful outdoor playground and covered picnic space next to the Memorial Health Dwaine and Cynthia Willett Children’s Hospital of Savannah. He was aiming for anything with wheels and he had his eyes set on a tricycle. His mother, Lucia, followed close behind, guiding the monitor that holds the IV tubes that connect to the port in his chest, where later in the day, Damien would receive another infusion of medicine to treat the leukemia he was diagnosed with on Jan. 29 of this year.
Damien was one of several children able to leave his room at the hospital to enjoy a kid’s cup of Leopold’s Ice Cream with multi-colored sprinkles. Pediatric oncology nurses, radiologists and specialists indulged, too, and mingled with their patients and parents in the fresh air for a brief reprieve from life-changing diagnoses, protocols and prognoses. Part effort to honor September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the Memorial Health Community Benefit Fund also donated $20,000 to CURE Childhood Cancer, the host of the ice cream party.
CURE Childhood Cancer’s moniker sounds like both a command and a challenge, and for 50 years the Atlanta-based nonprofit has been supporting families whose children have been diagnosed with some of the most aggressive forms of pediatric cancer. That support shows up in emergency financial relief when a parent has to reduce hours or quit work to accompany a child through years of treatment, in a meal brought to a bedside, in kinship with other families going through similar situations, and in funding for research that has helped develop targeted cancer therapies.
The National Cancer Institute calculates that only 4% of all government-supported research grants fund pediatric cancer research, even though pediatric cancers are the leading cause of death by disease for children and young adults under the age of 20. In August, the New York Times reported that the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium halted enrollment in clinical trials because the Trump administration had cut funding for the National Institutes of Health, the agency that administers those research grants.
In the last decade alone, CURE has contributed more than $35 million toward pediatric cancer research that has helped refine precision medicines. The organization has been so effective that Charity Navigator has given CURE a four-star rating each year since 2008, meaning it invests nearly 90% or more of the funds raised in its programs and services.
A life-changing diagnosis
One of the reasons for CURE’s efficacy, especially in Savannah, is that many of its employees were, at one time, its beneficiaries.
Jenny Wilkins became aware of CURE in 2003 when her then-1-year-old daughter, Catie, was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a malignant brain tumor in children that, according to the Mayo Clinic, is usually found in the base of the brain, the cerebellum, that controls balance and coordination.
Wilkins was an Effingham County elementary school teacher and Reading Recovery specialist when Catie was diagnosed. She said she noticed that her daughter was not developing the fine motor skills that other children her age were demonstrating. Scans revealed a tumor, but because there was not a pediatric neuro-oncologist in Savannah at the time, the Wilkinses had to travel to Atlanta to receive a diagnosis and initial treatment. There, at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Wilkins met CURE for the first time.
“On Thursday nights back then, they provided dinner, and so it got you out of your room. It gave you something different and better to eat,” recalled Wilkins. “You know, it’s hard to leave your room and go find food, because I had a toddler. She was so little. It let you meet other families. It was the kind of food and the camaraderie that you found throughout the meal.”
Catie passed away four years later, which prompted Wilkins and her husband to establish a fund in her honor to help raise much-needed resources for childhood cancer research through CURE. Wilkins volunteered for CURE, and CEO Kristin Connor challenged Wilkins to raise $25,000 a year, even while she continued to work as a teacher.
“She wouldn’t let me quit,” said Wilkins. “We landed on an event that is now called Catie’s Gathering, which are dinners where hostesses decorate their tables and invite their friends and we raise a lot of money…Eventually, it was just too much to manage. They needed an employee, and I was like, that’s my baby. I’ve got to do that.”
Wilkins is now the organization’s development director for South Georgia.
Originally, there were only two Catie’s Gatherings, and they continued to grow across South Georgia. Last year’s Bryan County Gathering raised $144,000, and next year, there will be seven gatherings from Savannah to Augusta.
Strength in numbers
One of the people who has been by Wilkins’s side the entire time is Amanda Crosby, Catie’s first pediatric oncology nurse, whose own daughter was just a couple of months older than Catie when she was diagnosed. Crosby served two decades at the bedside of children undergoing treatment for pediatric cancer and developed the role of a pediatric oncology nurse navigator at the Willett Children’s Hospital.
“It was rewarding and challenging and humbling… I feel so called to be in peds oncology,” said Crosby, who left nursing in 2023 to join CURE as its community engagement manager. “I watched CURE help family after family, and I thought if I could get involved on a professional level, I could still be at arm’s length away of that passion that I love.”
Crosby was essential to Mandy Garola, whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 2 in 2008. After three years of treatment, her daughter was in remission and is now in college. But going through that experience made Garola realize how “easily that could look different.”
Garola attended a Catie’s Gathering in Effingham County with other pediatric cancer moms. “I was like, what is this thing? I really felt called to give back and figure out a way to get involved…,” she said. “The research part of it was just so important to me, because we want better treatment outcomes.”
There, she heard Connor and Wilkins speak and ended up organizing the first Catie’s Gathering for Savannah. In 2011, Garola became the first full-time staff member in Savannah and still serves as vice president, overseeing patient and family services.
Catie’s legacy
All three women are spreading cheer at the ice cream social on Sept. 11, hugging parents, talking with the kids. It is a club none of them ever wanted to belong to, but they have become partners in finding a cure for the 100 children in active treatment at the Willett Children’s Hospital of Savannah.
The hospital’s Administrative Director Heather Newsome, a former pediatric oncology nurse who began her career in Savannah, said that 50 children are newly diagnosed each year. She views CURE as a vital partner in her work. “CURE provides such services as family support and also research into oncology medicine. Because of that, we really want to be able to give CURE $20,000 today to help with those services.”
Lucia, Damien’s mom, said CURE helped her get her bearings when she and Damien had to travel to Atlanta for treatment.
Another mother, Lauren, whose 4-year-old daughter Harper has been undergoing treatment for a Wilms tumor on her kidney for the past 15 months, had to pause work as a NICU dietician. “[CURE] has been amazing. Connecting us to other families. They bring us meals, either snacks or full meals. We’ve been in-patient, which, when [Harper] was going through her first regimen, it was all out-patient. She just started the second one, and it’s a lot more in-patient. It’s so nice to not have to worry about lunches. And my husband is still trying to work as much as possible,… and these last few months they’ve been really, really helpful with bills.”
Wilkins would give anything to have her daughter here with her today. The generosity and the community spirit, especially around Catie’s Gathering, buoy her. “We could throw parties all day long, but if these communities don’t come out and give, nothing happens. It’s her legacy.”
Amy Paige Condon is a content coach, site editor and lifestyle reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach her at [email protected].
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