Houston Home Journal - Oct 04, 2006

Family that lost child works to help others

10/04/06

By CHARLOTTE PERKINS

Journal Lifestyle Editor

It was Mother’s Day, 2004, when 5-year-old Joanna McAfee made her way to the top of a hill at the Cancer Survivor’s Park in Tampa, Fla. It wasn’t easy for her, because she was weak from another round of chemotherapy, but she was determined.

When she reached the top, she turned to smile at her parents and hold her arms up triumphantly. Her dad caught the moment with his camera.

The picture became a silhouette that thousands of people would one day recognize.

Six months or so from now, you should start seeing it on Georgia car tags. Below the tag number, you’ll see a website listed: SupportCancerKids.org.

Proceeds from the sale of the tag will go to the Joanna McAfee Childhood Cancer Foundation. It was an idea that became a reality because a state representative listened to a grieving father he had never met before, and took action. Rep. Willie Talton of Warner Robins made a special project of sponsoring HB 1053 and made sure the bill for Joanna’s tag got voted on during the 2006 General Assembly session.

Joanna, the daughter of Jeff and Misty McAfee, and little sister of Paul McAfee, was six years old when she lost her battle to cancer just before Christmas last year. She had won the hearts of people who never met her, in great part because her parents reached out to their community asking for prayers, and the request flew by e-mail from one friend to another.

Soon, hundreds, possibly thousands, of people knew that a little girl was faced with a huge problem – a very aggressive form of cancer called Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma.

They also learned that Joanna was much more than a “diagnosis.” She was a lively, bright child who loved butterflies and stories of princesses, dressing-up and make believe and real life fun like catching fireflies or running races.

Her battle with cancer began when she was three, when the family was living in Tampa, Fla. After countless hospital stays, surgeries and chemotherapy sessions, she seemed to be cured. Her tumor was gone. Her family was overjoyed, and ready for everything to settle down. Both had big families and many friends in Warner Robins, where they had lived most of their lives, and they moved back home and enjoyed just being a normal family again.

“Normal,” sadly, would last less than a year. By July, 2005, Joanna’s cancer was back, and growing faster than before. Short of a miracle, there was little hope.

There were prayers for that miracle and fundraisers by people who wanted to do anything they could to help. Jeff McAfee still marvels at the barbecue sale at which over 3000 plates of barbecue were sold, and many people came together as volunteers who had never met Joanna at all.

Her parents are trusting that the remarkable outpouring of love, support and prayer they received will be the beginning of something still bigger – what they are calling “help today, hope tomorrow” for children with cancer.

With Kimberly Bickley, Tommy Chambers, Jr., Donna H. Churchwell and James N. Richardson as directors, the McAfees have started the Joanna McAfee Childhood Cancer Foundation. Its vision, they explain, is three-fold.

They want to increase awareness of childhood cancer. “We want everyone to know how many kids are dying and how little is being done,” Jeff says. “The worst part is that so few are talking about it. “

They want to provide help and support to children with cancer and to their families.

“All the research dollars in the world can’t help certain kids,” says Misty, “ They need support.”

They want to provide grants for research to find cures for the kind of cancer that took their daughter’s life. This is a disease for which the overall survival rate has not increased in 30 years, and when Jeff McAfee says that his daughter “didn’t have a fighting chance,” he means it.

How are they doing? Well, they still get tears in their eyes talking about the daughter they lost to cancer, but they’re determined to make something good happen.

Jeff is fitting the Foundation work in with his job as an engineer at Northrop Grumman, and Misty, who taught at Warner Robins High School for many years, is volunteering her time to work with pediatric cancer victims. Joanna’s big brother Paul, a student at Huntington Middle School, is 14 now.

If you’re one of those who prayed for Joanna, or if your heart goes out to all children with cancer, now’s the time to make a note on your 2007 calendar. The tags, which can be ordered at the local tax office, will cost $25.

The design is done, the law has been passed, but there’ll still have to 1000 orders before production of the tags begins.