Home base for the Molly Rowlee Foundation, helping all kids with lymphoma.
Home of the Molly Fund, in memory of Molly Rowlee and supporting children with lymphoma.
About lymphoma:
Blood cancers such as leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma and myelodysplastic syndromes are cancers that originate in the bone marrow or lymphatic tissues. They are considered to be related cancers because they involve the uncontrolled growth of cells with similar functions and origins.
The diseases result from an acquired genetic injury to the DNA of a single cell, which becomes abnormal (malignant) and multiplies continuously. The accumulation of malignant cells interferes with the body's production of healthy blood cells. More info...
Last week Jennifer Kimball sent me this great email about her daughter donating her hair to Locks of Love in honor of Molly; what a great thing to do right before the holidays:
My daughter Lauren (born in April 2006) always had a lot of hair for her age. She has also always been very tiny. I used to joke that I wouldn’t get her hair cut because it was the only thing that gave her any weight.
Her hair was a huge part of who she is – comments like “Wow, she has such beautiful hair” or “Wow, she has such long hair for her age!” were common. When Molly was first diagonised with lymphoma, I decided that Lauren and I would donate our hair to Locks of Love. When Molly passed this summer, I knew it was time for Lauren to get that first haircut. (I’m still growing mine!) Yet, as the days and months went by, it was hard for me to let go. This past week, I was sitting in church with Meg and Buck as we watched our kids practice for the Christmas pageant. Meg and I were discussing angels and that Molly is still here, giving Meg kisses. That was when I realized that I am so lucky to have my babies with me and it was time to “let go” of the hair. SO, I took Lauren for her first EVER haircut on Thursday Dec. 10. She was able to donate over 10″ to Locks of Love and had a total of about 13″ +/- cut. The new “do” totally suits her personality and she loves it (as do I). We just hope that this little act will help put a smile on some other little girl’s face when she has a new beautiful wig to wear after her chemo treatments rob her body of her own hair.
Here are some shots I took at the salon. Best wishes, Jen & Lauren
Update: Noah has received thousands and thousands of cards, and the family is asking that people stop sending them
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Noah Biorkman is a brave 5 year-old boy in Michigan, in the last stages of a 2 ½ year battle with Neuroblastoma cancer. His family is celebrating Christmas this weekend and Noah’s request is to get lots of Christmas cards. We may be a little late, but we can keep it going for him. This is a great opportunity to show the same support everyone has given to the Molly Fund by just taking a few minutes to send him a card. Please send them to:
Noah Biorkman
1141 Fountain View Circle
South Lyon, MI 48178
It looks like we have some solid numbers for the “Mustache-A-Thon.” The final count isn’t in just yet, but it looks like we’re going to be 40+ strong. I rolled to the North Beach Grill last night, did a quick run-a-round before I had to split for a lil’ bit because of work related issues, but when I reappeared a few hours later I was greeted with a packed house. I was stoked.
Thank you all for the support – for the continued support. I love you guys. This “Mustache-A-Thon” is going be a heck of a lot of fun!
News travels pretty quickly in Hampton. For as long as I can remember, there has always been that one crazy thing that I’ve always wanted to do but I never really knew that I would have an opportunity to make happen. Some guys want to hike the Appalachian Trail. Some folks want to climb Mt. Everest or jump out of airplanes. I don’t want to do that stuff. I have always wanted to ride bulls. Bull riding. Climb on top of a 1900 lb animal and hang on for 8 seconds. Cover that sucker. Some guys want to surf big Pipe, charge Maverick’s, but I’ve always wanted to stomp around in my cowboy boots and ride some bulls. Apparently, I have a few pals that share a similar interest and a handful of us “Hampton dudes” are flying to TX. in April to attend the Sankey Bull Riding School. Rad. Hampton is sending a Kook a’kai posse to Lufkin, TX. and we’re going to ride us a few bulls. Skydiving? Whatever…..
The reason why I’m mentioning this is because Hampton might be seeing some “odd” things walking around town over the course of the next few months. Expect to see a few guys walking around with cowboy boots (we gotta break in our ridin’ boots), cowboy hats (because they’re so @#$% cool), and runnin’ some strange facial hair. My good buddy, Mike Ricker, found it in his heart to make sure that I arrive in Lufkin in grand fashion by swinging by the house last night to present me with a brand new Stetson. I love you, brother! Thank you. I had my “before the stache” photo taken in that hat last night, and I promise that I will wear that new Stetson during my adventures in TX….when I’m not on top of some big ol’ animal wearing my hockey helmet. I promised Meg that I would wear a helmet. If it’s good enough for J.B., then who am I to argue?
Chris Shipley’s 2010 NH Surf calender is in local surf shops and I bought a grip of them to use as “Molly Fund” gifts. Steve O’Hara’s photo is worth the price of the calendar. If I haven’t told you lately, Stevie, please know that I love you like a brother. Truly. Like a brother…..
We never stop moving here, and we’re going to maintain a perfect streak of collaborating with the best vendors. So here’s the new stuff, just in time for this weekend’s party:
Molly Send-off Hand Silkscreened Posters
We don’t ask too many favors, but we knew the great people at JDK would come through for something like this. They’re an overly-talented design firm in Burlington, VT and they have their own screenprinting setup in their basement gallery called Iskra. Michael Jager got the ball rolling, and Leo Listi and Matt Mayer got down to business to print us a batch of event posters to help the fund raise some money. There’s a lot of time, effort, and materials in doing something like this, and JDK / Iskra donated all of that and we couldn’t be more grateful to them. They’re 15" x 21" and they’re gonna look pretty darned good framed up on your wall. This is a very limited, very special batch. Once I have a final count tomorrow night they will be put on the site for first come, first serve buying, and you can pick them up from me on Friday or Saturday in person if you’re coming to the event. Otherwise, they’ll be shipped in a tube next week.
Griffin x Inkswell x Molly iPhone Cases
So can it get better? This is an awesome collaboration between Griffin (the best iPod accessories you can get), Inkswell (customize your accessories to make them better), and the Molly Fund. Griffin generously donated these cases to the cause, and then Alex Birch from Inkswell took over to imprint them with heavy-duty Molly logos. Both companies donated their time and materials for this first batch so we could raise some more money, and they came out perfect. Get all the specs for the case here. By the way, we’re not just saying the Griffin accessories are the best because they donated. Grab any case and compare the perfectly snug fit to your iPod or phone to anything else out there, and the Griffin ones will never have any jiggle to them…
Both items will be $30. We can’t thank any of these companies enough, so go give them some business already:
When we set out to get the Molly items on this site made, we made a solid effort to use local businesses. There’s plenty of options for getting stickers and t-shirts made online for cheap, but we checked around for small businesses and found the right companies to work with. They’ve all dedicated themselves to working with us to get the most reasonable prices they could afford, got us the stuff quickly, and it’s all top quality. This process has been so good in fact, they all deserve a mention here, and made us re-structure our links on each page to help out the little guy.
Ink Floyd screenprinting
Dave Collier has a screenprinting business named Ink Floyd in North Carolina, and jumped at the chance to help us out. He gave us a solid deal on printing the shirts, turned them around faster than we ever would have gotten from a big company online, and the print quality was far better than I ever expected. It didn’t stop there though; Dave also has a skate company called Saturday Skateboards and he donated 6 awesome decks for us to sell. We haven’t figured out yet how we’re going to do that, but keep an eye out for them. They’ll either be sold on the site, or through an auction.
There’s a fundamental rule if you’re ever going to pick a vendor to make a sign for you. If they don’t take enough pride in the sign representing their business, you should drive right by. Amazingly, a lot of sign makers don’t have the skills or just don’t care, which is why we stopped by Lucky to see if they’d make us some die-cuts since their own sign and truck were top-notch. It turned out they’re two really talented guys that also jumped at the chance to help us out once they heard Molly’s story. The deal was sealed when I found myself hanging out with them drinking beers while they wrapped up a huge same-day order on die-cuts.
They’re still building their web site, but you can find them here, just outside of Philly:
1348 Middletown Rd
Glen Mills, PA 19342
(610) 459-5825
Wright Labels
Nigel, who used to work with Buck, works at Wright Labels in North Carolina and also got us going with some die-cuts and posters for Molly’s party. They’re a printing business that keeps the process easy, and everything came out great. Check them out here:
wrightlabels.com
1100 Unity Street
Thomasville, NC 27360
(800) 678-9019
Yesterday, Jennifer Birch ran the San Francisco Half-marathon for Molly, and generated some money for the Molly Fund in the process. Her run was trackable here, but it seems it now only has an end-point from the race. Anyway, here’s a recap of her experience:
Like so many people, I never had the privilege to meet Molly in person. However, having hung on Buck’s every word through the CarePages site, I feel like I know her. I have a feeling I would have been lucky to have known her.
Yesterday, I ran the San Francisco half-marathon in her honor, as well to help raise awareness and donations for The Molly Fund. I have been training for this race for a while, well before we got the news about Molly’s cancer back in February, but something about this day, this race, felt right to run it for Molly, as if she was my intent all along.
Like most runners, I have my routines and well-honed quirks. Prior to race day, I try to plan as best I can for the best possible outcome but inevitably, something will come up to remind you that it’s not really all about you. Molly graced me with a few of these moments yesterday that I would like to share here.
I planned in advance to stay with a friend in the city the night before to make it easier on everyone when it came to getting me to the start line early. I forgot to bring along food, so I asked my friend if she had some bread and peanut butter for the morning. “Oh yeah, it’s in the fridge, help yourself tomorrow.” The first thing I saw the next morning, when up at dawn, alone, quietly trying to fix my fuel-up, was a jar of almond butter emblazoned with the brand name “MOLLIE” staring back at me when I opened the fridge. Even with the spelling misnomer, I smiled and thought to myself “This is going to be a good day. Let’s do this.”
Later, after I was dropped off at the start area in Golden Gate Park, I was looking over the lake, taking in the beauty, trying to calm my nerves a bit, possibly mumbling to myself…a flock of birds lifted up out of the lake and flew directly over me in perfect formation. I looked at the sky in awe, smiled and said a quick “Thanks” to Molly for the reminder that she was around, watching over me.
The next part was the best and the hardest. At some point a few days earlier when I created my music playlist for this race, I had a song on there I listened to during training that I was just not sure of. As I thought it over, I decided to keep it – it’s a bit sad, but the words and imagery are beautiful and made me think of how I was running for Molly. I always set my playlist to shuffle so I never know what order the songs will come. This song arrived at a moment that I thought maybe I might skip it to get on to something faster to help me through a tough spot. I thought about it for a few seconds and decided, “Nope. I’ll just take a moment during this part of the run and reflect on the reason I am running today: for Molly”… The words of the song came… “I will race you to the waterside..” and at that very moment, I emerged from a tunnel in the park, and looked to my left at the most beautiful waterfall I think I have ever seen. I have been in this park a lot and I have never seen this waterfall before right then. It took a lot to maintain my composure at that moment. I am afraid, actually, that I really didn’t for a good few minutes. Luckily, with the Molly sign I had pinned to my back, I think people understood that I had more than just an individual purpose that day. Thank you, Molly, for that reminder and for giving me wings to finish my race.
It’s been a long week of rebuilding, but the site is finally ready. Things have moved pretty quickly in the last few weeks, we had set out to start this project a while ago and it didn’t get too far. Spending time with Buck, Meighan, and Molly at CHB early in July brought home how important this was to do, and how we needed to find more ways to support the Rowlee family. We pretty much built the site that weekend, and it was thrown together. A week later, we received the heartbreaking news that Molly had passed away and already it was time to update the site. Rather than change what was there, it made more sense to do it right, and that’s what is launching now.
It’s been an amazing community of friends that has powered the Rowlees through this experience, and hopefully this can be a place to continue that support. There are two main areas still being built out – community message boards where you can leave messages or discuss anything relevant, and a photo section. I’m hoping people can contribute photos to help populate it, and I’ll post some updates on how to do that soon.
While Buck, Meighan, and Kieran have had a long journey already, this is just the beginning. The hope is to build the Little Miss Molly Foundation into something larger. The fundraising here has started as a means to help the Rowlees cover their significant bills, but this will evolve into a way to support other families facing the same challenges. The dust hasn’t even settled, and Buck is already focused on how to give back the same level of support that he’s received, and the need he’s seen first hand from other families struggling to pay the daily parking at the hospital or to cover the gas expense to get there. Future events are already being planned, and we’re hoping all of you can be a part of that.
We’re figuring this out as we go, so if you’ve got any input, don’t hold back. Buck now has access to this blog area, and will have the ability to post messages here. The CarePages are incredibly well-written, but it’s time to close that chapter and start a new one. If you haven’t read the CarePage updates, you really should. Sign up is quick, and it will make you re-evaluate everything that is important in your life, guaranteed.
