Cutting class for Locks of Love
Published: July 13, 2007
Fourteen silver scissors sliced through 24 students’ ponytails at Louise White Elementary School on Monday.
The hair, ranging from deep shades of brown to fair locks, streaked with blond and red, spilled down the students’ backs and into stylists’ hands.
The girls shook their heads from side to side. They giggled. They reached back and gingerly touched the ends of their now shoulder-length and chin-length hair.
And then each of the students, clutching their just-shorn locks in their hands, raised their fists in the air.
On Monday, Louise White Elementary School held an assembly during which 27 females — 24 students and three adults — cut off their hair in front of the school for Locks of Love, a non-profit organization that creates wigs for children who have lost their hair because of illnesses.
Four additional students donated their hair to the charity before Monday’s assembly.
The school also raised more than $400 for the charity to help finance the cost of creating the wigs.
Brinlee Gillies, a first grader with strawberry blond hair that stretched to nearly her waste, organized the event with the help of her parents.
Two years ago, Brinlee lopped off 10 inches of her hair to Locks of Love after learning that her aunt was battling cancer.
Her goal this year?
“To help other girls,” Brinlee said. “It’s just important to think about others and not just myself.”
The participants sat in folding chairs facing the audience crowded with students, teachers and administrators.
Brinlee insisted that she was not nervous about the drastic 10-inch haircut. She already had a style in mind — a curved bob, which she demonstrated with a swooping motion of her hands.
Patti Christopherson was a bit more apprehensive about her 6-year-old daughter Rachel lopping six inches off her medium length hair.
“Her hair’s not so long,” Christopherson said, after snapping a photograph of her daughter with her brownish-blond hair pushed over one shoulder.
Philip Battaglia, a hairdresser at Focas Hair Salon Inc. in St. Charles, was among those snipping and styling the students’ hair Monday.
For Battaglia, who watched his mom struggle with cancer when he was a child, the day held special meaning.
“I feel like as a hairdresser this is my way of giving back,” Battaglia said.
Fifth grader Nelifer DaSilva said she chopped off six inches of her dark brown hair because she knows people need it.
And parent Patricia Butts said she purposely grew out her long brown hair for Locks of Love, so Monday’s event was “perfect timing.”
During the assembly, Louise White School teacher Jenny Englehardt showed the students “how much of a difference” a wig makes.
Englehardt, who is battling cancer, stood up before the audience, lifted her brunette wig and showed her closely cropped head of gray hair to the students for the first time.
The audience applauded. Englehardt beamed as she patted her head.
“I may not wear my wig anymore,” she said.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: