FIGHTING CANCER Alex's lemonade fundraiser is growing
After Alex died at age 8, her parents made the project their full-time job.
WYNNEWOOD, Pa. (AP) -- Many parents have wished they could bottle the precious moments in their children's lives. Jay and Liz Scott may have done just that.
Nearly two years after the death of their 8-year-old daughter, Alexandra, the Scotts are at the head of a fundraising movement that grew from a plastic table in their front yard to a childhood cancer foundation that began selling bottled lemonade in stores this week.
The idea of setting up lemonade stands to benefit pediatric cancer research was all Alex's, and the experience of carrying it on without her has been "bittersweet, just like the lemonade," Jay Scott said.
"We are constantly talking to other parents whose kids are either sick or have just died and we're constantly retelling Alex's story," he said. "In that way, we're reliving it."
But watching Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation take off, he said, has also been both rewarding and fun for the family.
Alex was diagnosed just before her first birthday with an aggressive form of cancer called neuroblastoma. At age 4, she decided to set up a lemonade stand in her front yard to raise money for cancer research, and later her goal to raise $1 million with stands in 50 states landed her on national TV and gave her wide exposure.
Decision time
Alex learned she would reach her $1 million target shortly before her death Aug. 1, 2004, leaving her parents with a difficult decision. Did they have the time to make the foundation succeed without her and was it financially feasible to do so while raising three other children, now 11, 7 and 3?
"We weren't sure without her because she was the one everyone wanted to talk to. She was the face; she was the determination," Liz Scott said. "But she knew at some point that she was raising money for other kids. So we have to continue. Obviously she wanted us to, or she would never have set us up like that."
The pair then decided to establish an independent foundation and have dedicated themselves to it ever since. Jay Scott left a job as a medical sales representative in 2004 to become executive director of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.
The foundation specializes in giving research grants and easing the process of getting experimental drugs to children who could benefit from them.
Jay Scott arranged Alex's first nationwide lemonade stand day through an Internet campaign, but much of the foundation's success has come through word of mouth.
Dwayne Schwarz, vice president of USA Beverage Inc., heard about the foundation from a friend in the business.
"I went home and discussed it with my wife and family," he said. "My daughter had done a book report on it and knew all about it. So I felt I could help them with their fund-raising efforts."
Distribution
USA Beverage, maker of Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer, is distributing the bottled lemonade in supermarkets from New York to Virginia. The foundation will get 23 percent of the wholesale profits from the bottled drink, which will be available in traditional and pink lemonade flavors.
Schwarz said he'd like to see the product become a nationally known brand and that he couldn't ask for a better marketing tool than Alex's own story.
It's a story that inspired a group of homeless people in Texas to set up a stand and raise about $600, a group of Philadelphia school students to raise $5,000 in pledges and an 87-year-old foundation volunteer to call his work stuffing envelopes the best job he has ever had.
It is also a story that enabled the foundation to announce 23 new grant recipients this year.
Max Levine, 15, of Cherry Hill, who is battling the same form of cancer that Alex had, has benefited from clinical studies at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that the foundation funds. This year, he worked at a lemonade stand at a charity coffee shop and talent show his sister, Sarah, set up with her choir.
"People kept coming up and saying what a great job we were doing," he said. "It made me feel proud to be helping others I didn't know."
His mother, Sue Levine, said she knows from experience that the foundation is making a difference.
"We never know from scan to scan if a particular treatment is working," she said. "It just helps to know another option is there and something isn't being withheld from us just because the hospital doesn't have the resources."
The foundation's next big event is its Lemonade Days, June 9-11. The Scotts hope as many as 50,000 people will hold lemonade stands nationwide.
From there the couple might begin work on a traveling wagon, dubbed the "lemonade brigade," that would take the drink on the road. Before that could be done, however, they would need to find a sponsor.
"I'd love to see it happen just because of Alex," Liz Scott said. "She was a traveler at heart, but she never really could travel much because of having to be close to the hospital all the time."