Rockland Residents Go Bald for a Good Cause

Bald is beautiful.

So say the volunteers and local citizens who took part in the St. Baldrick’s Fundraiser Sunday at Dominican College. The event participants shaved their heads to raise money for children’s cancer and to show solidarity with those children who are afflicted with the disease.

“Kids lose their hair from chemo and a lot of kids are very embarrassed when they lose their hair,” said Vinny Garrison, organizer of the Rockland event. “They feel like everyone’s going to know they're sick. So this is just a way to let those kids know, (that it’s) not a big deal. I can be bald, you can be bald, and it makes you no different.”

St. Baldrick’s was founded by three wealthy reinsurance executives who wanted to give back to the community, so they turned their company’s St. Patrick’s Day party into a head-shaving event to raise money for childhood cancer. Shavees would solicit donations that would go towards research to help find a cure for the disease. Today the Foundation has raised over $100 million for cancer research by shaving over 175,000 heads, including 15,000 women. It is also the largest private contributor to childhood cancer research in America.

The shavings are held all across the country, but the Rockland event has been organized for the past seven years by Vinny Garrison of Pearl River. He first got involved as a volunteer eight years ago and then took over as the organizer the following year when the previous organizers no longer had the time commitment to do so. However the shaving means even more to him now that he has a three-month-old child.

“Now that I have a kid, I hope that he’ll never have to deal with having cancer and if he does, by the time he does, hopefully this kind of money raised will fund cures for his potential cancer,” Garrison said.

Several participants showed up in teams to raise money for the cause. One such team was Team Chance, started by Grace and Gregg Cosgrove of Pearl River. Their son Chase shaved his head at the 2008 and 2009 St. Baldrick’s events before passing away in a boogie-boarding accident in North Carolina at the age of 12. His parents then started Team Chance to continue their son’s tradition and to honor their friend’s child, who died of a brain tumor a month after Chance’s passing. The team now has 28 members, the majority of whom are kids.

“He recognized that kids were suffering, kids his own age, and he thought it was important to make this small little gesture to show that he understood and empathized with kids,” said Grace Cosgrove of her late son. “For a young person, and with all these young kids here that are part of our team, they all recognize that. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Gregg Cosgrove works for Unilever and the company also donated some Axe Buzz to participants in the shaving. The styling aid is specifically for those with shorter hair and also contains sunscreen to protect the newly bald heads from possible skin cancer.

Another team in attendance was “Saving Sarah”, which was started in support of Sarah Hyman of Suffern. Hyman was two years old when she was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of the leg, in October 2007. The team was started in 2008 to raise money in Sarah’s honor, and today she has been in remission since the end of her treatment in August 2008. One of the shavees was Daniel Hyman, Sarah’s father, who has been getting shaved for the last three years. This year for the first time, Sarah was allowed to help out with the shaving of her father’s head.

“She did a great job,” Daniel Hyman said. “Maybe she wants to be a hairdresser now.”

While most of the shavees were male, a few women did go bald to support the cause as well. One of these women was Debra Lukasewski of Pomona, who participated in the shaving for her second year. She first decided to join in the action after seeing her friend often go to these events.

“Why not?” Lukasewski said. “ It’s for a good cause. I really don’t care how short my hair is. It’s better for where I work … It’s not an air-conditioned building, so I sweat a lot … and it’s just so much better for me (to have a shaved head) because I can’t take the heat.”

Last year’s shaving raised $162,000, and at the start of Sunday’s event, the donations were already up to $70,000 with more money still coming in.

“This is a great event that raises money for such an important cause, helping battle cancer, especially for young people,” said State Senator David Carlucci, who served as an honorary shaver by helping shave the first head of the day. “So I couldn’t think of a better thing to do Sunday morning but to support so many people that are here today that really show humility and step forward and not just talk the talk but walk the walk in terms of helping out and doing something.”

***

Editor's note: If you have pictures from the St. Baldrick's Fundraiser, add them to the article by simply clicking "add your photos & videos" in the photo box to the right of this article.