Community Pulls Together for a Great Cause

By Chris Gosek

A local student at Carver Elementary, Lemuel Vardy followed the lead of a hockey teammate, and with some help from his father, Mark Vardy, turned their idea of shaving their head’s for the St. Baldricks “Conquer Kids Cancer” fundraiser into an overwhelming success.

Lemuel explained, “A kid on my brother’s (Brigston) hockey team was going to do it…so I thought it would be a cool thing to do.” He continued, “I made a deal with my dad and told him maybe he could grow his hair out too and cut it…so he had to do it!” Mark Vardy, who runs Vardy Chiropractic and Wellness Center in Knightdale and Wendell spoke on how the event winded up taking place at his Knightdale location, “Originally we were going to raise some money for it and go to one of the events in Raleigh, but the times did not fit well with our schedule, so we checked with the foundation about some other options. After speaking with them, we decided to host our own event. We were shooting to raise $500 originally, but we surpassed that the first day.” He added, “Lemuel, Brigston, and their friend Hunter got the ball rolling and it just kept growing…we raised our goal to $1,000 and passed that in a week, so we figured with four weeks until the event we’d shoot to bring in $4,000…we ended up with over $6,000.”

When all was said and done 28 people shaved their heads St. Baldrick’s, including the entire family of Director of Public Safety, Chief Brown whose son, Jon, is a friend of the Vardy boys and once he had decided to partake his father, mother, and even his younger sister had their locks shorn for the great cause.