By Lynne Hendricks
Staff Writer
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AMESBURY — As young girls growing up together, they shared each other's secrets. Now that Lucy Grogan is gone, having lost her battle to acute myeloid leukemia four years ago, Lucy's friends are sharing her dream of providing therapy to others struggling to beat cancer.
They gathered on the steps of Amesbury's Town Hall yesterday morning, a group that's grown to 24, dressed in the tie-dyed shirts one of them designed to sell to raise money for Lucy's cause.
As the mayor officially declared Sept. 12 Lucy's Love Bus Day, the Teen Leaders, as they're called, received some high-level support for their efforts to carry on their friend's legacy and praise for all they've done to launch Sunday's Fly-Away Festival in Lucy's honor. The event will be held at Woodsom Farm from noon to 3 p.m.
"They were friends of Lucy's," said Lucy's mother, Beecher Grogan, of the group that's worked for nine months to organize this weekend's event, which will feature the release of 1,200 butterflies in the fields of Woodsom. The butterflies are being sold for $15 apiece to raise money to fulfill Lucy's dying wish.
When she was 12, sitting in a hospital bed, Lucy wrote a letter to her oncologist that asked, "When you look at the sick children, follow them to the place they can speak to you in. Notice their bodies are two things, love and illness, and help them remember the love and not the sickness." She was interested in how other patients could be helped through her own experience.
Lucy also spoke to her mother about how special she felt knowing that the community had provided so much in helping to pay for therapies not available to her through the hospital, like Reiki, massage and acupuncture therapies to relieve pain. She told her mother that when she was done fighting cancer, she intended to do something to provide other cancer patients with those same therapies.
The idea for Lucy's Love Bus was born before Lucy's death in 2006 with the idea of raising funds for that purpose, and as Lucy shared her vision at that time with a few of her closest friends, some of those same friends, plus a number of new ones, are getting on the bus.
"I volunteered for Lucy's Love Bus because when I used to visit Lucy at the hospital, I saw the pain and suffering that she and all the other children had to go through," said one of Lucy's best friends, 16-year-old Katy O'Neill. "When Lucy and Beecher told me about their idea for their organization, I couldn't wait to join. Being involved allows me to revisit my memories with Beecher and do something that I know Lucy would be proud of me for."
Grogan said Katy and the others, some of whom are friends of Lucy's sister Jane, have done everything to make Sunday possible, including selling the butterflies, calling up CEOs of companies to get sponsorships and standing up before a crowd telling their friend's story to get more people to help.
"They've done a lot of social media networking," Grogan said. "They've produced two videos. They've reached out to Ellen Degeneres. They are a very motivated group of kids."
Grogan tells the story of another close friend of Lucy's, Ali Pelletier, who at the age of 16 took it upon herself to stand before the CEO of New England Biolabs and ask for help in fulfilling her friend's dream.
"She went and presented to the CEO, and he gave her a check that minute for $2,500," Grogan said. "She called me, and she was almost in tears. That's a moment this child will never forget. It wasn't for her. It was for kids with cancer."
After that donation was received, the group received another $11,000 gift from the Institution for Savings and several small donations that brought the total amount to about $30,000. That money will go toward providing for the list of Lucy's clients who have been depending on the Love Bus for four years now.
"It's been fascinating to see them learn how to talk about what we do — how to articulate what we do and getting more confident about things," Grogan said.
Lucy will be at the Fly-Away in spirit, her mother said. When Lucy passed away, her mother and other family members and friends became aware that a number of butterflies were around them, flitting about on the wind and filling the empty space Lucy left with their delicate beauty. It is Grogan's feeling that Lucy had something to do with their appearance. So when 1,200 butterflies are released into the sky on Sunday, she feels Lucy will be there witnessing the scene. She will be present also in the unique butterfly bush that now bears her name, thanks to a friend of the family.
When Grogan asked the owner of Prides Corner Farm, Tim Kane, to supply butterfly bushes for sale for Sunday's event, he took her request a step further and surprised her with a unique species created as a hybrid by the grower, named Lucy's Dream after Lucy.
"They had a brand-new species of butterfly bush that had no name, so he worked with them and asked if he could name it after Lucy," Grogan said. "It has a lavender flower."
The bushes will be for sale for $25 each but will be the only ones of their kind available for the next three years, as they will take that much time to propagate. There will be bands and children playing and several children battling cancer speaking about the good work Lucy's Love Bus is doing for them.
"Lucy is totally smiling right now," Grogan said. "She's very happy about all of this."
