Jonah has been advocating for the March of Dimes since he first learned to speak, his mother said. The first time the Horwitz family participated in the Nassau County walk in 2005, a volunteer at Eisenhower Park handed the then 2-year-old boy a microphone. When he said “every dollar counts” loud enough for the walkers to hear, people began cheering loudly.

Christina said this has became her son’s personal mantra when it came to raising money for the charity, as he has actively campaigned alongside his parents and grandparents to raise more than $130,000 as a team over the course of eight years. She said he has worked hard to support an organization trying to prevent what happened to his twin brother, Noah.

Jonah and Noah were born after 28 weeks gestation, but Christina said she knew when she was 20 weeks pregnant that Noah was terminal. Although Noah died at birth, Christina said she knew she couldn’t focus on the tragedy, but instead on her surviving twin and “the light at the end of the tunnel.

“I had to come to grips with that and carry on my pregnancy as long as I could, knowing one baby was not going to make it,” she said. “…Now we say that what we didn’t get with Noah, we got double of with Jonah.”

As the Horwitz family returned to the walk near their East Meadow home each year, they began looking into the different programs March of Dimes organizes for parents of premature babies and the research they’ve gathered about the cause of early births. In their fourth year of participation, Christina gave birth to Aaron at 31 weeks gestation.

Like Jonah, Aaron spent two months in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Winthrop – but their medical issues differed. Jonah had required blood transfusions, hernia surgery and the use of ventilators, while Aaron had a meningitis scare and severe breathing issues and surgeries.

The fact that both of her sons are healthy and doing well in spite of their turbulent first few weeks of life is something that Christina thinks inspires others to donate to their team for the walk every year. “It’s just a matter of people believing in us,” she said.

“They see our boys and they see how amazing they are, and they want the same outcome for other babies,” she said.