THON Weekend Swiftly Approaches!

This has been a busy year for Penn State students. Within the past couple of weeks we have lost our legend, welcomed back the news vans we have all missed so much, and we have reclaimed our spot in primetime. But there is a strong central force of the school’s reputation that has gone unmentioned by much of the media: The Penn State Dance Marathon. Better known as THON, it stands as the largest student run philanthropy in the world. Founded in 1977, it has raised over $78 million dollars for the Four Diamonds Families of Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. As the event swiftly approaches us next weekend, I would like to focus this piece on its fundamentals and how it has impacted me.

These families have been faced with the crushing blow of learning that their child has been diagnosed with cancer. We can’t take away their diagnosis, and we can’t take away that initial feeling, but what we strive to do as volunteers is ease their pain, their medical bills, and give them a chance to connect with other kids and families suffering from similar ordeals. THON is a giant cluster of students in different sororities, fraternities, special interest organizations and committees who have joined together to fight pediatric cancer. Each group gets to “adopt” one child or more to get to know them and to support them in their battles. There is never a Four Diamonds child who will ever go through pediatric cancer alone.

This leads me to Jake. My organization, Pillar, acquired him and his family last year when they entered the Four Diamonds Fund. Jake is one of their eight children with ages that range from one to sixteen. His cancer was incredibly hard on the family financially and emotionally. With seven of the children being home-schooled, and one recently diagnosed with autism, his parents had some tough decisions to make on where to direct their attention and funds. The entire family made sacrifices that no family should ever have to make. With some encouragement from the hospital staff, they joined us last year and neither we nor they have looked back since.

Seeing Jake’s illness progress was an incredibly hard thing to endure. Taking him out for ice cream would end in violent bouts of stomach sickness, and more often than not the family could not make it to our events at all. I had never been more motivated to fight for a child in my life. I threw myself into our organization, going on “canning” trips to raise money, organizing fundraisers and joining committees within our organization to do more. I would go on two hour drives with fellow members to babysit the children while the parents ran errands and worked. Jake is now in remission, and knowing that we helped motivate his success and helped ease his parents’ minds means everything.

This is Penn State. This is what we do and what we fight for as a university. My stories are the same as the thousands of others who do what I do and more. The 46 hours the THON dancers are on the floor is a struggle, but it is nothing compared to what a four year old with leukemia suffers. Being on the floor with those children is a privilege, and if you ever got the chance to shake the hand of one of them you would suddenly find that your hero is a two year old, or a six year old, or a thirteen year old who has faced more than many probably ever will in an entire lifetime.

We can’t fight this fight unless we join together and do it as an entire school, and these kids can’t fight this fight without all of the work and time that goes into making THON the one weekend they get to just be children. Every meeting, every snow-filled day of standing on street corners, and every fundraiser is for the kids. They motivate us, and they have become our family. I only hope to be half of the individuals they are. I look forward to next weekend, when I finish up my last THON and know that I made a difference and left my stamp on something bigger than myself. I hope I get the chance someday to let Jake, and all of the other Four Diamonds Children know what a stamp they have left on me.