LISBON, Maine — The Monday morning before returning to school post-February break, 10-year-old Addy Kelleher of Lisbon Falls is excited. She and her older sister, Cadence, romp about the house, giggling with anticipation and perhaps some nerves. After all, when Addy walks into classes, she's going to look quite different.
"People are going to be very shocked!" Addy exclaimed, laughing.
About a week ago, a family friend came over one evening to wrap Addy's hair into four small ponytails and snip them off one by one. Monday morning, Addy's mother, Erin, donned some crinkly plastic gloves and massaged a bright pink dye into the remaining hair on Addy's head. It's a bold fashion choice, but Addy's family said there's a method to the magenta madness.
"Both of our daughters really want to help people. They have really good souls," Patrick Kelleher, Addy's father, said.
Patrick said Addy recently came home from school one day with a new desire to help people who have cancer after some conversations in the classroom. She decided to take on the drastically different hairstyle and start a GoFundMe page, raising more than $1,000 in less than 24 hours. That far surpassed her original goal of $600, and the total is still climbing at nearly $2,500 and counting. Patrick said people from Maine to Florida to California have chipped in.
"The shaving of the head is kind of symbolic of cancer patients going through chemo and losing their hair and feeling a bit self-conscious over it," Patrick explained about the motivation behind this undertaking.
For the Kellehers, this mission hits close to home. Patrick's stepmother recently battled breast cancer and is almost in remission. His own mother died at the age of 52 years old from bone cancer that originated as breast cancer. He was just 27 years old at the time and said she was diagnosed on his birthday. She passed a little more than a month later.
"Dad said a lot of nice things about her, and I really wanted to meet her, but I never got the chance to," Addy said.
For her, the deep sense of compassion and drive to help others originated a long time ago. Her sister Cadence, who is 14 months older than she is, has a very rare disorder that causes episodic muscle spasms. Patrick said Cadence is one of four or five people known in the world to have this type of variant.
"It has really opened her up to wanting to help others, having a sister that is going through something like that," Patrick said about Addy.
"One of the times, I think it was like three years ago, [Cadence] had to stay in the hospital for eight days. I had to stay at my grandma's because I wasn’t able to come. I literally cried a river, and [Cadence] said she did, too, because we wanted to see each other so badly but we couldn’t," Addy said.
Addy said she's planning to donate the hair she cut off to Locks of Love to help people who may be going through experiences like chemotherapy.
"It kind of [feels] really good to know that I’m going to help someone who has cancer," Addy said.
Addy's family said she's planning to donate all money raised to the Maine Cancer Foundation. If you'd like to give to her cause, click here.