Rx for survivor: music, attitude
15 year old Gage Markley of Champion gets another surprise. Frank Fordeley gives Gage the Kustom amplifier shown behind him for beating leukemia. It serves as motivation to stay positive.
15 year old Gage Markley, left, of Champion gets another surprise. Frank Fordeley gives Gage the Kustom amplifier for beating leukemia.
By Ed Runyan
A music store owner gave the Champion teen a professional-quality amplifier.
11111Gage Markley had just come with his mom, Linda Mendenhall, from the hospital, where he was receiving chemotherapy treatments for leukemia.
Mendenhall wanted to cheer up her son, who liked playing the guitar and had a starter guitar and amplifier that his dad, David Markley, had bought for him at a secondhand store.
The family hoped a trip to Fordeley’s Music & Instrument Repair, 4922 Mahoning Ave., just might cheer up Gage, who was “really sick” at the time, Mendenhall said of that day in the fall of 2006.
Gage had been in the store a few times but hadn’t gotten to know Fordeley personally.
That day, however, Fordeley spent two hours talking to Gage, learning about his battle with cancer and his interest in playing the guitar.
Also on the visit to the store was Gage’s grandmother, Ruth Markley, who told Fordeley there was a chance Gage, who was wearing a bandanna over his bald head, might not survive to see another Christmas. Gage had been diagnosed with the disease about a year earlier.
“That really struck me,” said Fordeley, who had lost his mother, Rosemary Fordeley, to cancer in 1988, after she had battled the disease for decades.
“Frank said, ‘Can you promise me two things?’” Mendenhall, recalls. “‘Can you promise me you’ll beat the cancer and practice every day?’
“He reached up and got the guitar and said, ‘Buddy, it’s yours if you keep the promise.’”
Tears from Gage’s mom and grandmother flowed freely, Mendenhall said.
The guitar was a Fiore, custom designed by Fordeley himself, and manufactured in China.
Fast-forward two years, to October, with the now 135-pound Champion High School freshman going to St. Elizabeth Health Center, where he learned that he was cancer-free and that his chemotherapy treatments were done.
The first place Gage wanted to stop on the way home was Fordeley’s music store.
“He said, ‘It’s because of you I’m still alive,’” Fordeley recalls Gage saying during that visit several weeks ago. “I said, ‘No, I wanted to teach you what my parents taught me: If you put it in your mind, you can do anything.’”
Fordeley said he understands that a positive attitude is crucial to battling cancer.
“It gave him courage to carry on,” Gage’s grandmother said. “You don’t find people every day that are willing to give you that type of break.”
As for Gage, he not only kept his promise to beat back cancer, but he played that guitar, too.
“It’s an everyday thing,” Mendenhall said of Gage’s guitar playing. “He’s up in his room, listening to the radio and playing along,” she said.
Playing guitar is one of his passions, Gage said, adding that he thinks there is a chance he will learn to play the drums, too, and continue a family legacy of performing music into adulthood. He likes rock and heavy metal music; his favorite bands are Pantera, Skid Row and Crossfade.
But that Fiore guitar is also a symbol.
“When I get older, it’s going up in a glass case. It’s a very special gift,” Gage said, standing in Fordeley’s store this week.
The reason Gage was back in Fordeley’s store was that Fordeley decided Gage could use another symbol to keep him going as he copes with the potential that the cancer will return.
This time, Fordeley asked Gage to repeat these words: “I promise to do everything in my power to make sure it doesn’t come back,” and Gage repeated the words.
And with that, Fordeley gave Gage a professional-quality Kustom amplifier and speaker — something so powerful Gage could use it to play Packard Music Hall, Fordeley said.
“Thank you,” Gage told Fordeley, clearly holding back his emotions.
“You just keep going,” Fordeley said. “I want you to go enjoy yourself.”
The cost of treating the cancer, along with job issues and health insurance issues facing the family have left them in difficult financial straits, Mendenhall said, including problems with their house payment and utility bills.
The couple is accepting contributions to Gage’s savings account at Cortland Bank’s Bristolville branch, 6090 state Route 45, to help with his medical expenses.
runyan@vindy.com