rubber bracelet

Fundraisers and shows of support for Brooke Healey, the 4-year-old daughter of a Madison teacher and coach, have been springing up around Madison at wrestling meets, the bowling alley and in schools and shops. Brooke, the daughter of Steve Healey, a teacher in Madison for more than a decade, is undergoing a series of radiation treatments in New York to shrink a tumor on her brain stem. After the radiation treatments, she is expected to undergo experimental treatments in hopes of beating the disease. Healey, an assistant coach for the high school football, wrestling and track teams, has been a math teacher at Madison High School the past two years, and taught math at Madison Junior School the 10 years before that. While Healey has been on a leave of absence exhaustively researching the disease and treatment options, fundraising efforts for Brooke were set in motion by family friends. Continue reading →

Underneath the plastic wristband that details all the plays and formations and signals, MarQueis Gray wears another rubber bracelet during every game and practice. It's orange with black letters, and reads "Shutout Croix's Cancer." That's a reference to Croix Hurtis, a 12-year-old middle-school student in New Richmond, Wis., who was diagnosed with Burkitt's leukemia and lymphoma on the day after Chrismas last December. Continue reading →

When 11-year-old Cameron Neal faced his second brain surgery in two years, his cash-strapped family did what more and more people are doing to pay for catastrophic illnesses: private fundraising. “If it weren’t for St. Helen School (in Dayton), I don’t know what we would have done,” said his stepmother, Shawnalee Neal. “They have the most supportive faculty and staff.” The Neals have insurance but still faced tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. The school held walkathons and spaghetti dinners and sells “Praying for Cameron” rubber bracelets. Continue reading →

BARRY, ILL. -- We when talk about those rubber bracelets, we think of the yellow ones that Lance Armstrong endorsed or maybe the pink ones that are sold for breast cancer awareness. But there's a young woman from Barry, Illinois that has taken that bracelet idea a step further and now she is going to be honored by the American Legion Convention of Illinois. 16-year-old Cailtin Lee said she's always liked the idea of helping her community and so when she and her friends got together for her 16th birthday and they all had those rubber bracelets on, a new idea dawned on her on how to give a little more back to the Barry community. Continue reading →

Friends of Seth Couch are raising $10,000 to establish the endowment for a Midwestern State University scholarship in Couch's memory. Couch was studying marketing at MSU and worked as a server at Johnny Carino's Country Italian Restaurant when he died Oct. 16, 2011, at age 22. Continue reading →