Schools, parishes raise $150,000 for St. Baldrick

By Jessica Able, Record Staff Writer

A half dozen schools and parishes in the Archdiocese of Louisville collected more than $150,000 for the St. Baldrick Foundation, an organization that raises money for pediatric cancer research.

At DeSales High School on March 19, more than three dozen people waited their turn to sit in a chair and get their locks shorn, including Spanish teacher Wanda Trigg.

Trigg said she participated in the event in honor of her mother, who passed away in December after a battle with cancer.

“I think she would think I’m crazy,” Trigg said with a laugh. “I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s feels really good and freeing.”

Trigg, who personally raised $668, added that life should not always be about how you look but “what you can do for someone else.”

As of Tuesday, DeSales had raised $7,500, tripling the school’s goal of raising $2,500.

This is the first year that DeSales has held a St. Baldrick event.

St. James Church in Elizabethtown, Ky., held their St. Baldrick fund-raiser on March 16. Twenty people from the parish and school, including the pastor, Father Charles Walker, shaved their heads. The group raised

$3,000 but expects that number to double once all figures are totaled.

Parishioners at St. Michael Church raised $49,000 for the pediatric cancer research group.

Group organizer Rachel Miles said there were about 90 peope who shaved their heads, including pastor Father Richard Sullivan.

Miles, whose one-year-old daughter, Addison, is fighting a rare form of leukemia, said the group surpassed its goal of $31,000.

As of March 19, St. Albert the Great Church had raised nearly $50,000 of its $75,000 goal.

In its 11 years of hosting St. Baldrick events, the church on Girard Drive has raised more than $700,000, said Taylor Deibel, parishioner and St. Baldrick event organizer.

“Our goal is to hit the $1 million mark,” she said.

Our Lady of Lourdes Church raised $52,000 at their March 8 event. One hundred people shaved their heads for the “Bearcats for Baldrick’s” event.

This is the second year Our Lady of Lourdes hosted a fundraiser for the St. Baldrick Foundation.

“We saw other parishes hosting these events and we wanted to start one of our own,” said Tricia Fike, a parishioner who organized the fundraiser.

Fike said the group’s goal was originally $25,000.

“We blew that out of the water!” she added.

In addition to the head shaving, there was a dance party for the kids and an area for people to make hard candy bouquets for patients at Kosair Children’s Hospital.

Preparations for “St. Baldrick’s 2014” is already underway.

“We are already excited and planning for next year. Our goal is to grow the number of people participating and to top what we did the previous year,” Fike said.