In September of 2016 our daughter, Bridget Kelley, then age 7, was diagnosed with T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. She ended up spending 157 days inpatient at Boston Children's Hospital, needing to eventually receive a stem cell transplant on March 3, 2017 (the donor was her sister Shannon, who was 2-years old at the time). Since that time Bridget's health has steadily improved, with no major setbacks to date. On January 2, 2018 she returned to school for the first time in over 15 months, and two months later, on March 3, she celebrated the one-year anniversary of her transplant.
Our family (Bridget and I, along with my wife Megan and our daughters Fiona and Shannon) feel incredibly fortunate for Bridget's recovery, as well as the love and support we received from so many during this entire ordeal. Last year we created "Team Bridget" t-shirts, with the goal of raising some money for a worthy charity with the shirt sales (we raised nearly $2,500 for Cops for Kids with Cancer), but we wanted to also start participating in charitable walks/runs for some incredible causes while wearing these shirts. Fortunately in 2018 we are now able to do this....and the Run for Charlotte Road Race will be our first event as a participating group!
This is an absolutely amazing charity, which not only gave our family financial assistance during our time of need, but has been a part of the inspiration for us starting up our own nonprofit later this year (more details to come). We thought that this was the absolute perfect event to choose as the kickoff point of what we hope will be many, many more to come!
If you register for the race (awesome!) please send me a message (dan@kelleykidsfoundation.org) so that I can add you to our team page! Although we are just hoping to get as many people as possible to register, we do hope that your family and friends will be inspired by your efforts and contribute something toward the fundraising efforts; so please share this page to help us really show some appreciation for this incredible charity.
Thank you all in advance!
Dan Kelley
