Beaumont, Morton on same side in cancer fight

Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Monday, September 28, 2009

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Beaumont volleyball players designed the T-shirts and spearheaded the fundraiser for breast cancer awareness.

Beaumont volleyball players designed the T-shirts and spearheaded the fundraiser for breast cancer awareness.

Beaumont volleyball players designed the T-shirts and spearheaded the fundraiser for breast cancer awareness.Pat Wiesenhahn, a longtime school custodian, was among the cancer survivors honored at the benefit volleyball match.The Beaumont and the Morton players wore their pink T-shirts during warm-ups.Many of the students and families in the stands had bought a $10 shirt. Proceeds went to the Side-Out Foundation for cancer research.Beaumont's cheerleaders and football players partnered with the volleyball teams in the fundraising effort.Morton coaches Patti Howard and Rubin Jones accepted pink roses in honor of her mother and his sister, both of whom are cancer survivors.Morton students also took home a rose for their teacher Debbie Sogin, who has battled breast cancer.

A common cause drew competitors together on the middle school volleyball court and resulted in a tally that ultimately trumped the scoreboard – a more than $2,000 donation for breast cancer research.

Students at Beaumont Middle School and Morton Middle School have campus connections to breast cancer.  At Beaumont, custodian Pat Wiesenhahn put a face on the disease and reminded them that they’re all family. Across town at Morton, drama and music teacher Debbie Sogin also taught students lessons in perseverance and courage.

When the Beaumont volleyball team was considering community service projects, students decided on “Dig Pink” to raise awareness of breast cancer and raise money for medical research.

Beaumont and Morton together collected a total of $2,129.71, mainly by selling T-shirts for $10 apiece.

“I thought it was an outstanding effort by the school,” said Wiesenhahn, who has been the lead custodian at Beaumont for the past 10 years.

Wiesenhahn, who discovered her cancer in October 2007, endured surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. “I took it a day at a time,” she said, describing how she dealt with the illness and with missing three months of work.

“The school was so supportive,” Wiesenhahn recalled. “I’d get care packages and food and visits. This is a very tight community.”

Part of the healing process was knowing she’d eventually resume her routine at Beaumont, she said. “I never thought for one minute that I wasn’t coming back.”

When she did return, her energy level was sub-par for a while. So the students helped her along, taking out the trash and sweeping their own classrooms.

“It’s part of your family,” Principal Kate McAnelly said matter of factly. “When you work in a school, you get connected to everybody.”

Beaumont’s volleyball team, along with the cheerleaders and football players, reached out to their extended FCPS family at Morton for the Sept. 21 fundraising match. In addition to the T-shirt proceeds, the gate money and extra cash collected in the stands went to the Side-Out Foundation, which promotes Dig Pink throughout October as a Breast Cancer Awareness Rally.

“We were all really excited to help out because a lot of people have personal connections with people with breast cancer,” said eighth-grader Madison Grant, captain of Morton’s A team.

In between matches, Beaumont players handed out roses to cancer survivors and their families, including Wiesenhahn. Morton students accepted one on behalf of Sogin, and coaches Patti Howard and Rubin Jones also took roses – for her mother and his sister.

“When you educate kids with service projects like this, they realize you’re not invincible,” McAnelly said.

At Morton:

Archived story about Debbie Sogin’s battle