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Letter writing benefits cancer research

By By Benjamin Smith

Friday, October 27, 2006

Close to 400 students have volunteered to write letters requesting donations for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Up ‘til Dawn, the largest charity fundraiser conducted on campus, will hold “Round Up,” a western-themed letter-writing party, at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 1 in the fifth floor ballroom of the Kansas Union. The KU group joins more than 150 college campuses nationwide in the student-led program that fights to end childhood cancer.

Up ‘til Dawn, which raised more than $69,000 in 2005 and 2006 for the children of St. Jude, will put on the event at which student volunteers will write letters requesting donations to friends, family and acquaintances, and will listen to a father who lost his child to cancer.

St. Jude is the third largest health-care charity in America and it is in the business of making miracles.

It’s a pretty remarkable cause, it benefits a place that works miracles.

--Brennan Metzler, Up 'til Dawn co-entertainment chair

Doctors from around the world send some of their toughest cancer cases and most vulnerable patients to the St. Jude facilities in Memphis, Tenn., for free treatment. The hospital’s Web site said “all patients accepted for treatment at St. Jude are treated without regard to the family’s ability to pay.”

Melissa Schmidt, director of Up ‘til Dawn’s officer’s board, and several other officers have been promoting the event on campus this semester asking students to join the initiative.

Brennan Metzler, the group’s co-entertainment chair, said that it had been a wonderful experience working for the charity.

“It’s a pretty remarkable cause,” Metzler said. “It benefits a place that works miracles.”

St. Jude’s mission is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment.

Research efforts are directed at understanding the molecular, genetic and chemical bases of catastrophic diseases in children, identifying cures and promoting the prevention of cancers, acquired and inherited immunodeficiencies, infectious diseases and genetic disorders.

Schmidt said that she had visited the hospital in Memphis and thought it was a special and unique place.

“I’ve never been to a hospital that’s that cheerful,” Schmidt said. “It’s not like a hospital at all.”

For more information, go to the Up ‘til Dawn Web site at http://groups.ku.edu/~uptildawn/ or stop by their office in room 400 of the Kansas Union.

Kansan staff writer Ben Smith can be contacted at bsmith@kansan.com.

— Edited by Elyse Weidner

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