Courtesy of Vestavia Hills Fire Department
This summer, the Vestavia Hills Fire Department no doubt will have some fires to put out — but that’s not the only thing it is working to extinguish.
It also is doing what it can to “extinguish” childhood cancer with a T-shirt campaign beginning July 25. The navy blue T-shirts display a firefighter holding hands with two children with gold ribbons, the symbol of childhood cancer awareness.
Proceeds will go to the Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders to aid its fight against the disease.
Anyone who purchases a T-shirt will have it in hand before Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September.
According to the American Childhood Cancer Organization, 15,780 children younger than 21 are diagnosed with cancer every year. Of those, a quarter won’t survive.
“Childhood cancer hasn’t been as much in the limelight as some other causes,” said Chris Madison, a firefighter and medic at Vestavia Hill’s Station No. 1.
“The more that childhood cancer awareness gets pushed, the grand hope is for more funding for research and volunteering,” he added.
Madison was instrumental in helping the department choose the beneficiary for its fundraiser this year, as childhood cancer is close to his family’s heart — his wife has worked for more than a decade in the oncology clinic at Children’s of Alabama.
Todd Wilson, an apparatus operator at Station No. 1, said they were glad to get behind the cause.
“We had a little vote and decided that’s what we wanted to focus on helping this year,” he said.
Members of the department submitted T-shirt designs and worked together to merge some of the ideas into the one being used.
“We just want to help as much as we can and get as much money as we can to help fight childhood cancer,” Wilson said.
In addition to the T-shirt sales, the Vestavia Hills Fire Department will be accepting donations and will combine all the proceeds into one check at the end of the drive, he said.
The Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders is part of Children’s of Alabama and is a partnership of local, national and international centers of excellence. It provides care and treatment for 90 percent of the pediatric hematology-oncology patients in the state, according to its website.
The shirts can be ordered for $15 at any Vestavia Hills fire station.
For more information about the Alabama Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders, go to childrensal.org/cancer.
