Community continues to chip in for students with cancer
<p>Teegan Haugen and Zach Sciarrotta drop the last piece of wood from the timber project near Libby Elementary School last Friday. (Seaborn Larson/The Western News)</p>
<p>Worth the weight: Lucas Graves hauls a heavy load from the nearby wooded area to the Libby Elementary schoolyard. Graves was one of nearly 300 kids who spent an hour of their Friday afternoon collecting wood to be auctioned off for students Kiye Jenkins and Katherine Lind, both diagnosed this year with stage four Hodgkins Lymphoma. (Seaborn Larson/The Western News)</p>
<p>Nearly 300 Libby elementary students last week spent about an hour collecting wood from five Douglas Fir trees cut down to be auctioned off in October. The auction will benefit Kiye Jenkins and Katherine Lind, two students diagnosed this year with stage four Hodgkins Lymphoma. (Seaborn Larson/The Western News)</p>
Nearly 300 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students last week spent part of the afternoon hauling wood from the woods nearby to be auctioned off in October. The auction will benefit two Libby students, Kiye Jenkins and Katherine Lind, who were diagnosed this year with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Sixth-grade language arts teacher Kendra Brenner suspects the wood collected would add up to about two or three cords of wood, worth about $160 a cord, but Brenner is hoping the community will match the hard work and generosity put forth by the youth.
“We want to get the word out there that we have two kids in very serious need and we want it to be a joint effort for them,” Brenner said. “Both Katherine and Kiye went through our school district, they’re both amazing kids and we want to support them in any way we can.”
The auction is the brainchild of Machelle Brossman, a retired hospital employee that used to work with Eryn Jenkins, Kiye’s mom. When she first got involved, Brossman immediately enlisted the help of her sister, Angela Wolfe, who had helped organize a special hunt for Zachary Haines, a 11-year-old Libby student who died of a brain tumor in 2014.
“When this happened with Eryn, it hit so close to home. I’ve watched Kiye grow up,” Brossman said. “I hate to see them struggle and I want these families to be here for each other. My sister and I, we were raised with that same passion for the underdogs, so she was on board right away.”
In the last few weeks, Brossman has been hard at work devising an event that wouldn’t just divide the funds raised, but double them. The October auction to be held at the Memorial Center she announced last weekend is now fully packed to feature live music by the Copper Mountain Band, a live and silent auction and a fundraising contest between local agencies like the police and fire departments, the Forest Service and others, where the losers’ heads will be shaved by 1987 Golden Gloves Light welterweight champion boxer Todd Foster.
“My thought was, we need to dual this fundraiser. This motivated me to make it better and bigger. It wasn’t, ‘OK, I have to split what I have,’ it’s, I have to double what I make. It’s gotta be great,” she said.
When Kiye’s GoFundMe.com account blew up to over $5,000 in a short time, Brossman and the community slowly became more aware of a second case in Katherine Lind’s diagnosis. Katherine discovered a lump on her neck back in April after she was hit with a softball. After visiting a few different doctors and hearing a few different results, a doctor at the Seattle Children’s Hospital had the final determination: stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the same diagnosis Kiye would receive in August.
And while the campaign to support Kiye’s family exploded over social media, Katherine’s took some time to reach the public eye.
“That’s probably on us,” said Kirsten Lind Lehnert, Katherine’s aunt. “We’re not the type to ask for anything. We try to do it ourselves.”
Lehnert eventually set up a GoFundMe account for Katherine about two months ago, garnering a couple hundred dollars over time. But after support for Kiye gained some real traction in the community, that community soon realized they had not one child to support, but two, and her online donations account has now grown to over $1,875 donated by 45 people.
In the five months since the diagnosis, Lehnert said Katherine, who is being raised by her 74-year-old grandmother, has been the beacon of positivity in a dark time of uncertainty.
“She’s been better than the rest of us,” Lehnert said. “She has a great outlook on life. She figures it could be worse, it could have been something incurable.”
Lehnert, Katherine, and Karin, Katherin’s grandmother, have been overwhelmed by the recent leap in donations, Lehnert said. The Lind family is hesitant to reach out for help during hard times, but when they let that go and accepted the community effort, it appears their family has grown with the support now surrounding them.
“Libby is amazing when they come to support their people,” Lehnert said. “They have been absolutely amazing. The ladies working on these fundraisers, there aren’t any words to say thank you. Thank you is not enough.”
As the October auction approaches, Brossman is still collecting donations and hosting meetings on how to command the growing community support. She’s still setting up a bank account for the dual action fundraiser, and can’t yet collect cash or check donations. For more information on how to donate or contribute to the October auction, contact Brossman at 291-1534 or montanagirl2010@hotmail.com.
Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.