Zach Street was 10 weeks premature and struggling to breathe in a neonatal intensive care unit when his parents adopted him in 2001.
- Angel and Scott Street with Zach. After Zach’s death, the Streets adopted four children who help fund raise for the Zachary J. Street Lung Center Fund at Nemours. (photo courtesy of the Street family)
Five years later when Zach lost his battle with lung disease, his mother Angel called the Nemours Fund for Children’s Health to ask if any memorial donations they received could be used to help other kids.
Angel Street, a stay-at-home mom, didn’t stop there.
With the help of her husband Scott, a computer engineer, she organized almost nonstop raffles, auctions, yard sales, bead sales and benefit dinners.
In the five years since their son’s death, Angel and Scott have raised almost $45,000 for the Zachary J. Street Lung Center Fund at Nemours.
“Any and every way that we can think of, we try to raise as much money as we can,” Street said. “The only way we could find to make some sense out of why this beautiful child would be taken was to help other children like Zachary.”
One of the couple’s prized possessions is a snapshot of a little boy at A.I. duPont Hospital for Children using a machine purchased with the money they raised.
Lori Counts, managing director of the Nemours Fund, says families like the Streets each raise money in their own way. Some stage fundraising barbecues. Brides ask wedding guests to donate in lieu of wedding gifts. Children forego birthday parties. Some, she says, just send the proceeds in the mail because “it’s too emotional for them to set foot back on the hospital grounds.”
- Nikki Spagna (left) sold a comic book about a child hero called “The Dominator” to raise money for research after her son Dominic “The Dominator” Osorio died of brain cancer at age 7. (photo courtesy of Nicole Spagna)
Nicole Spagna, a call center manager, raised $30,000 for Nemours pediatric cancer research by staging events and selling a comic about a superhero called “The Dominator” in honor of her late son Dominic Osorio.
“It nice that people give the hospital coloring books and toys and things, but I just decided the kids really need the research. They want to live. They need the gift of life,” Spagna said. “When you get into the world of cancer, and your child is sick, and they tell you there’s nothing else, you can’t believe that in 2009 that’s all they have to offer. It’s just very heartbreaking. So, as parents, we take it upon ourselves to raise money to get medicines for these children. I don’t ever want another parent to feel the way I do.”
It’s not unusual for a T-shirt salesman to show up at Denni Ferrara’s front door at 8 pm when she’s busy with her four children. Ferrara and her friend Christine Meyer run large-scale fundraisers year-round to raise money for cancer research — although there was a happy ending for both their children at A.I. duPont Hospital.
Ferrara and Meyer stage events such as the Delaware Mud Run that draws 3,000 participants and 10,000 observers. Their all-volunteer Leukemia Research Foundation of Delaware has donated more than $50,000 to Nemours and $500,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with another $500,000 pledged.
“When your child is being treated, you’re on a rollercoaster ride. You’re up one minute; you get bad news the next,” said Ferrara, whose family owns Frightland, and Greggo and Ferrara Inc. “I just feel like if we can help one other family not go through what we’ve gone through, then we’ve done a great thing.”
Joe and Chris McDonough started the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation in honor of their son, who died after enduring leukemia, eye surgery and brain surgery at A.I. duPont Hospital.
The foundation raises money for scholarships, financial assistance and research grants to institutions around the country. A. I. duPont will soon dedicate a new $250,000 device to develop new chemotherapy treatments donated by B+. A plaque will honor Andrew.
“Families give even when it isn’t the best outcome because if they invest in research, then someday maybe somebody else won’t have to go through what they’ve gone through,” Joe McDonough said. “My son died a brutal death over a 167 consecutive days, and I didn’t want to see any other child go through that.”
To mark their daughter Annie’s first birthday, Alyce and Andy Shaw made a donation to Nemours. Annie had been successfully treated for a neuroblastoma as an infant. Annie’s healthy smile landed on the cover of an invitation to a Nemours fundraising gala. Now Alyce Shaw serves on the committee that plans the fundraiser.
“She’s a normal, healthy 7-year-old,” Annie Shaw’s mom said. “Without hesitation, I’d say duPont Hospital was a huge, huge factor in that.”
After their son Zach’s death, Angel and Scott Street returned to their adoption agency and said they were ready to adopt more children with special needs.
“Everybody said, you’re crazy,” Street said. “But in our minds there were children out there like Zachary who needed families, and what an incredible human being Zach was. We were blessed to be his parents.”
Exactly two years to the hour after Zach’s death, the adoption agency delivered four siblings, ages one, three, four and five.
“It turned out they were all healthy,” Street said. “Their special need was that they were a group of four.”
Now, the Street children string beads with their grandmother so they can sell them to raise money for the foundation honoring the brother they never met.
