1995 Kristen Ann Carr Fund Holiday Letter
Dear Friends,
The holidays this year mark the third anniversary of Kristen’s death. But they also measure the great strides made by her Fund in the brief period since her departure. Since January 3, 1993, the day that will always haunt our memories, The Kristen Ann Carr Fund has gone from Kristen’s idea, which was to help sarcoma patients and teenagers and young adults with all kinds of cancer, to a large endowment within the T.J. Martell Foundation, to a free-standing foundation which uses that endowment to realize all of her goals.
In 1995, The Kristen Ann Carr Fund began working with an outstanding physician, Dr. Martin Heslin, under the guidance of Kristen’s surgeon (and friend), Dr. Murray Brennan. Dr. Heslin will publish over the next year several important scientific papers that establish the current state of medical knowledge of sarcoma, a key baseline for improving treatment and reaching a cure. Additionally, Marty lives up to the fellowship’s other requirement: a compassionate and humanistic approach to clinical care. One of the first things he explained to us was that he’d become a doctor in part because of what he’d learned from the problems surrounding his father’s death from heart disease. He is exactly the kind of caring doctor Kristen would have embraced, and we’re proud that his resume will always carry her name.
Under Dr. Brennan’s guidance, a sarcoma patient support group has now been established at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A sarcoma newsletter will also begin publishing within the next few weeks, and its circulation will involve patients and other interested parties beyond the bounds of MSKCC. (Contain the Foundation to obtain copies.)
We have also made a grant to MSKCC’s Post-Treatment Resources Program which will allow that unit, directed by the marvelous Karrie Zampini, to begin programs specifically aimed at teenagers and young adults, both while they are hospitalized and after their treatment is finished, when a whole different and equally difficult set of problems arise. Karrie Zampini, like Drs. Brennan and Heslin, combines great practical skill with a passion for compassion; she’s precisely Kristen’s kind of person. With the help of Karrie and our friend, Elena Dorfman, a rhabdomyosarcoma survivor, the Fund is also exploring how to expand the teenage and young adult on a nationwide basis.
Finally, architect Lee Skolnick and his firm are drafting plans to transform the teen room in MSKCC’s pediatric ward into a modernized facility that will provide on-the-spot recreational and educational resources for adolescent in-patients.
Of course we continue to sponsor the annual pediatric patients Christmas party with our friends at the Hard Rock Cafe, a highlight of everyone’s year (especially Dave’s since he can and does still fit into that Santa suit). Last year, we had several members of the New York Giants, New York Rangers, and New Jersey Devils to thrill the kids–it’s a very rare cancer fund that can boast the presence of stars from the last two Stanley Cup champions.
We also sponsored another Women’s Health Luncheon at the Sony Club, with speakers from MSKCC who focused on nutrition, and have plans to do more such events in the coming year. Additionally, physicians from MSKCC made a presentation at a cocktail party at the Vero Beach home of Kristen’s grandfather, H.J. Fitzgeorge.
The heart of The Kristen Ann Carr Fund remains Kristen’s sister, Sasha, her fiance, Michael Solomon, and her beloved circle of friends, led by Ilyse Gordon, who come through over and over again. At February’s A Night to Remember party at The Metronome, more than a thousand people showed up (a few even had to be turned away), and more than $80,000 was raised! In July, a smaller party at the Crane Club raised another five figure sum.
The holiday season has been a time of depression and turmoil for our family for the past several years. Our friend, Larry Salander of the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, has given us the chance to dispel the gloom this year by making the Salander-O’Reilly exhibition of the artworks of the great American cartoonist and sculptor Rube Goldberg a Kristen Ann Carr Fund benefit.
The connection between Rube Goldberg’s art and a cure for cancer may seem strained to you, but it doesn’t to us. That’s partly because we love Goldberg’s drawings for their freshness of spirit, just as we loved Kristen. As you know, establishing The Kristen Ann Carr Fund was an act of hope in the face of a virtually insurmountable set of problems, and an attempt to bring to bear on these problems the fundamental values of creative imagination. To us, Rube Goldberg’s art operates in the same spirit. Whimsical as they undeniably are, Goldberg’s visionary machines promise that all problems have solutions susceptible to human inventiveness, and that however unlikely those solutions may be, they should–must–be pursued. If Rube Goldberg’s chains of consequence seem unlikely to you, consider how unlikely it is that a 19-year-old dean’s list student at New York University will suddenly develop a virulent tumor that claims her life within two years of its discovery, and how much more unlikely that she will respond to this calamity with such heart and generosity that she becomes legendary among all those who care for her, not only parents, sister, family and friends, but also doctors and nurses.
Out of sorrow, joy. That’s what it means to us to bring together Rube Goldberg’s art and our daughter’s Fund. We invite you to witness the brilliant work that inspired it, showing at 20 East 79th Street, when you are in Manhattan during December.
There are many others to thank for a year’s work well done, including our friends at MSKCC such as Julia MacCormack and Mort Chute, Kevin Kinder and everyone at Luckytown Digest, our online benefactors, and the numerous sarcoma patients from the CompuServe Cancer Forum who remind us each day how brave and terrible this fight truly is. But we should close by mentioning one exceptional moment. At this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, when he accepted the Song of the Year Award for “Streets of Philadelphia,” Bruce Springsteen dedicated it to “Kristen Carr, whose spirit is in this record.” We don’t know if many of you knew that Kristen played such a part in that music, but we are proud that it’s so–and deeply thankful for Bruce’s acknowledgement of it.
We hope that our very tangible accomplishments in the past three years continue to earn your support, and we thank you for helping us honor Kristen in the only way possible, by living up to the promise of her spirit and fighting that Dragon, the only enemy she ever really possessed.
Love,
Dave Marsh, Barbara Carr, and Sasha Carr