Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Man and Woman of the Year

I’d never met even 1/8 of the people filling the huge ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge last Saturday night for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Eastern Shore Man and Woman of the Year Grand Finale Celebration, but by the end of the evening, all 500 found a special place in my heart.  Having learned about the organization and being a donor to it since my own daughter was diagnosed in 2007 with a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I started getting involved with the Eastern Shore MWOY a few years ago.  You just can’t say no to Jennifer Veil, the enthusiastic, engaging MWOY coordinator –“I’m trying to cure cancer; what are you doing?!” is her daily mantra.

Although a long-standing national initiative of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Eastern Shore Man and Woman of the Year was launched just 5 years ago with Veil at the helm.  Inspired by her young nephew’s battle with leukemia, Veil rallied family and friends – her nephew’s mother Katie Wilson, chief among them.  In the first year, the Eastern Shore MWOY had 8 candidates and raised $83,000.  This year, with 10 candidates, the campaign raised an incredible $457,480.

In the MWOY program, individuals are nominated to be candidates and then work for an intense period of 10 weeks to raise money through private donations, corporate sponsorships, securing auction items, and more.  The campaign culminates in a grand finale where all of the candidates and their teams gather to celebrate their efforts, the numbers are tallied, and the final total revealed.  The man and woman who raise the most money are named the Man of the Year and Woman of the Year respectively.

Monies donated go directly to support treatment for blood cancer patients and cutting-edge cancer research, including that of Dr. Carl June – the “rock star of blood cancer research” – who first introduced the use of modified HIV cells to kill cancer cells in advanced leukemia patients.  Many of our Eastern Shore neighbors who have fought blood cancer are directly familiar with LLS having received help with transportation costs to University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, and other Baltimore area hospitals through the organization’s patient travel assistance program or with medical bills through their co-pay assistance programs.

In and of itself the money is amazing, but it’s the stories behind the money that move me to tears.  Standing at the back of the room that night, I listened to Kim Silpath from Galena as she talked about her son whose cancer has come back not once, not twice, but three times.  Silpath was effusive in her thanks to the crowd for their efforts that she knew would translate into better treatment and more hope for families like hers.  There was Wyatt, age 5, and Mia, age 3, this year’s Boy and Girl of the Year, dancing about with their parents.  Smiling and happy, who would know they are both in treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)?  Then there were the cheers for Melissa Coligan, mother of 3 and this year’s Woman of the Year, who in 2015 was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and underwent a bone marrow transplant.  Now, there she was at center stage in front of all those people, having raised over $121,000 for LLS and blood cancer research.

So what do I say to all those people I didn’t know – the candidates, their teams, all the other guests in the room who bid on auction items and donated extra money on site, all the people behind the scenes, the mom who shared her deepest pain to thank the crowd for stretching to do as much as they could to raise as much as they could to fight what I often called during my daughter’s personal battle, “the Big C”?  What do I say to all those people knowing that what they did and what those before them did through Man and Woman of the Year to fuel the organization that fueled the research that I know helped save my own daughter and so many others? Nothing other than “I’m grateful and I love you all.”

If you would like to get involved with our campaign, please contact [email protected]. The more the merrier! Next year’s gala will take place on June 9, 2018 in Cambridge.