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4/7/2008
Making Dreams Come True: Local Foundation Conducts Fundraiser to Help Children
Anderson Independent - Charmaine Smith-Miles
Instead of focusing on his next check-up, where doctors will tell him if his cancer still is in remission, 15-year-old Cory Watt of Iva has something else to think about: a trip to Alaska.
"I'll be leaving in September," Cory blurts out. "I can't wait."
He can't wait because he's never left the continental United States. And once he's there, he will be able to go hunting with Larry Csonka, a member of the Professional Football Hall of Fame and host of "North to Alaska," a television show that focuses on hunting, fishing and outdoor life in Alaska.
It is all thanks to The Outdoor Dream Foundation started by Anderson natives, Coach Harold Jones and his son, Brad. The foundation's mission is to grant wishes to children with terminal or life-threatening illnesses ? something that Cory's mother, Rebecca Watt, is thankful for.
"They have been wonderful to us," Ms. Watt said.
She said her son has been on several hunting trips, some local and one in North Carolina, since he was diagnosed with cancer on Halloween 2007. Ms. Watt, who works at AnMed Health, was with her son when a doctor-ordered scan showed two tumors in his brain. She said she knew exactly what she was looking at when her son went for the scans.
"He started having headaches," Ms. Watt said. "I thought it was his vision. When I saw those tumors come up on the scan, it was hard."
But the Outdoor Dream Foundation helped those bad memories fade, gave her son something positive to which he could look forward.
"I had to go through radiation for six weeks," Cory said. "The hunting trips was a way for me to get away from it for a few days."
So on Monday, that foundation had a fundraiser at the Anderson Civic Center. Cory and his mother were there. About 200 to 300 people gathered inside the Civic Center. They all came to support the foundation and to see Royston, Ga., native and country music singer, Rex Norton, and the two-time Bassmaster Classic champion, Hank Parker.
The event was expected to raise at least $30,000, which will help about a dozen kids, Brad Jones said.
In its fourth year, the Outdoor Dream Foundation was started because most of the wish-granting organizations already established do not sponsor hunting, fishing or other outdoor sporting type trips, Mr. Jones said. Some kids have even been to the Iditarod, the dog sled race in Alaska.
So far, the foundation ? which started with the Jones family working with one child ? has helped 130 kids from 16 states. But most of those kids have been from Anderson ? children like Cory and his cousin, 16-year-old Chase Duffell, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2007.
Chase has been to Texas, where he was able to deer hunt on the El Cazador Ranch. There he did something that may never have been possible for him in Starr, where he is from. He shot an 8-point, white-tailed buck.
"To see Chase suffering so much for two years, and then to be able to see him go out there and have so much fun, it really touched me," said his father, Stephen Duffell. "Now he?s got a lot of good memories to replace the bad ones."
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