Calhoun goes bald to fight cancer

Since 2007, Calhoun High School has raised more than $500,000 for childhood cancer research, according to Calhoun English teacher Peter Magnuson. The Merrick school passed the milestone on March 17 at its ninth annual St. Baldrick’s Foundation fundraiser, at which barbers and hairdressers shaved or cut the hair of community members in a show of solidarity with children suffering from disease.

Calhoun raised about $48,000 this year to help children with cancer, Magnuson said. He has organized the school’s annual fundraiser since its inception. Participants, including many Calhoun students and staff members, ask people to reciprocate the gesture by donating money. He estimated that 175 people got extreme crew cuts in Calhoun’s gymnasium during the most-recent event.

“It’s great how it’s grown and become part of the culture of the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District,” Magnuson said. “It’s a testament to these communities and kids.”

Most of the money goes to St. Baldrick’s, a nonprofit organization that funds medical research into childhood cancer. Magnuson said Calhoun also has given a few thousand dollars to related organizations, including Music Never Stops: The Tyler Seaman Foundation, which provides music therapy programs for teenagers with serious illnesses and is named for a Calhoun graduate who died of bone cancer.

Magnuson pointed to St. Baldrick’s funding of the research behind the cancer drug Unituxin — St. Baldrick’s has said it funded the work of the drug’s lead researcher, Dr. Alice Yu of University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center — as evidence that the foundation helps save lives. The Food and Drug Administration this month approved Unituxin to treat high-risk neuroblastoma, which the National Institutes of Health describe as a cancer of immature nerve cells typically occurring in children younger than 5. In a clinical trial, 63 percent of patients who received a treatment that included Unituxin were alive and had no tumor growth three years later, whereas the same was true of 46 percent of patients whose treatment did not include Unituxin, the FDA reported.

“Half a million dollars is a lot of money —I feel like that’s made an impact in the research,” Magnuson said.

He highlighted several individuals who raised $1,000 or more this year, including Matt Advocate, Hope and Hayden Daniels, George Haile, John Joyce, Brian Moeller and Saul Weiner. Calhoun’s football team collectively gathered more than $5,000, and Merrick’s Smith Street Delicatessen donated $2,500, Magnuson said.