GWINNETT COUNTY: Holiday home away from home

It’s tough being in a strange city, away from home, during the holidays.

My wife and I had that experience Thanksgiving Day 1995, the month our son was born. Miles’ medical emergency uprooted us from our roost in Orlando. He was airlifted by helicopter to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. There, at five days old, he underwent three surgeries: One sustained his life for surgery. One detected what was wrong and how to fix it. The third fixed the problem —- a heart condition in which his microscopic arteries had to be snipped, then reattached.

Like many, we knew of the Ronald McDonald House only by name, and those donation boxes in the namesake’s restaurants. That was it. Yet a Ronald McDonald House became our home away from home for nearly a month during my son’s hospital stay. Memories of the volunteers, staff and parents at the St. Pete house resurfaced the other day when Larry S. Witt of Califon, New Jersey sent an e-mail.

He’d read an obituary I wrote Tuesday about Alexa Grace Rohrach, an 11-year-old Acworth girl. She died the day after Thanksgiving due to complications from a rare pediatric cancer called neuroblastoma. Witt’s son, 4-year-old Liam, has the same disease.

He wrote: “As I write to you, I am looking at the back of my son’s head … admiring the hair that has just recently started to grow back after a second round of chemo … Our newly-created organization is dedicated to him, those who have lost their battle to cancer, and those who will lose their battle in the days, months and years to come until better treatments are made available.”

Last year, cancer families from across the country helped with a three-week bake sale to raise money for the research of a disease in which only 30 percent of the children survive. Nearly 250 volunteers baked and sold nearly 100,000 cookies, netting about $400,000 for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City —- the same center that treated Alexa.

After the event, calls continue to pour in from individuals who either wanted to buy cookies or volunteer. This one bake sale led to the formation of a nonprofit —- Cookies for Kids’ Cancer (www.cookiesforkidscancer.org.). Its purpose: To raise money for all pediatric cancer research. The nonprofit offers tips on how churches, businesses and other groups can host bake sales. Online, you can also purchase all-natural cookies prepared specifically for the cause. (The nonprofit has partnered with a family bakery in California that makes the cookies.

“What we realized after the ovens cooled was that we were on to something,” said Gretchen Holt, Witt’s wife and nonprofit co-founder. “So we put together a tool so people can have bake sales across the country for pediatric cancer research. While neuroblastoma is near and dear to our hearts, all pediatric cancer funding gets the short end of the stick.”

With the holidays upon us, organizers of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer mused about parents across the country who are staying at Ronald McDonald Houses while their children seek treatment. Many will be there on Christmas as well as New Year’s Day. The nonprofit wants to make the holidays sweeter for these families in their homes away from homes.

So this weekend, New York-area parents are to bake about 13,000 cookies that during the next few days will be shipped to Ronald McDonald houses across the country. Metro Atlanta has two —- the Gatewood Road house and the Peachtree-Dunwoody Road house.

“There’s nothing like being away from your home on the holidays,” Holt said.

How true.

> Rick Badie updates his Gwinnett blog Monday through Friday.