Losing hair to gain support

January 12, 2016 at 12:05a.m.

By AMANDA TONOLI

Twenty-five LaBrae High School students are donating their hair to raise money for fellow student Tanner Noble.

“It will grow back,” said LaBrae senior Nathan Hendryx, one of the 25 donors and member of Vikings HOPE – the student-run group raising money for children with cancer. “And he doesn’t have a choice.”

Tanner, 15, a LaBrae ninth-grader, has stage four medullary thyroid cancer, a carcinoma attacking parafollicar cells, or C cells, to produce certain hormones in the body. He has undergone the removal of his thyroid and various lymph nodes and is having chemotherapy treatments at the Cleveland Clinic – a facility out of the family’s insurance network – leaving it responsible for the medical costs.

Hendryx, with the help of various others, started Vikings HOPE – helping others pursue excellence – late last year, helping those in need because of medical costs.

Hendryx said the group reached out to St. Baldrick’s, a cancer charity for children, to find a specific case to donate to when it learned about Noble’s diagnosis.

“This was closer to home,” Hendryx said. “We were planning it and it just kind of took off.”

Several sports teams from LaBrae and other surrounding communities, made up of current and former students, have had competitions to see who can raise the most

Five other high schools – Newton Falls, Lakeview, Champion, Mathews and Canfield – have reached out to help the cause, widening the community effort to support the Noble family.

Canfield schools Superintendent Alex Geordan, a LaBrae resident, graduate and parent, said not only does he have close ties to the Noble family, but to the community as well.

“The community comes together for the greater good,” Geordan said.

Shave for the Brave, a Vikings HOPE event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 14, brings the cause to the public, inviting anyone wanting to donate to the Noble family to the Johnson Community Center, 800 Gillmer Road, Leavittsburg.

Students in Vikings HOPE put together a bake sale, a 50/50 raffle, a pancake breakfast and “head shaving / pass the pony” – the choice to shave one’s head or donate 8 inches of hair in ponytail style.

Those wishing to donate hair have to fill out a form and obtain sponsors to raise money for them to lose their hair.

Hendryx said students have raised almost $10,000 so far.

LaBrae senior Kasey Rininger started a fundraising project with supportive labeled bracelets and T-shirts. All of the proceeds from the bracelets go to the family as well as half of the proceeds from the T-shirts – half goes to the cost of the shirts.

Representatives of Braceville Christian Church, 4387 Church St., Newton Falls, have started a benevolent fund for donations to the Noble family to allow donors a tax deduction.

To contribute to the fund, it should be labeled for the care of Tanner Noble.

In addition to the 25 students giving up their hair, Demetra Noble, Tanner Noble’s mother and LaBrae softball coach, is shaving her head to support her son. Geordan also has committed to shaving his, once the $10,000 goal has been reached.

Noble’s progress can be found on Facebook, Twitter and InstaGram, by searching #tannertuff.

“We are trying to make the bad situation as good as we can,” Rininger said.