By Monica Drake
Review Intern
On Sunday, the Glitz hair salon located on Baldwin Road helped make the dreams come true for several kids by raising money for the Children’s Leukemia Foundation.
The employees at Glitz made little girls princesses for a day by painting their nails, giving them up-dos and tiaras and painting their faces. In just the 8 hours of activities on Sunday, Glitz raised over $32,000 to be donated to CLF.
CLF was founded in 1952. In the 1960s, there was a 90 percent fatality rate for those diagnosed with leukemia. There is now a 90 percent survival rate instead.
Glitz started raising money to fight leukemia about 19 years ago when a client of Cherie Barnett, Glitz’s owner, died from the disease.
One little girl, Emily Webler, was diagnosed with leukemia when she was two-and-a-half years old. She is now 10 and has been cancer-free for six years.
?[The CLF] has done a lot for us, because when you have a child that goes through chemo, there are large medical bills, so they provide a lot of fun things to do that we wouldn’t have had the money to do,? said Jill Webler, Emily’s mom. ‘But also just to get her mind off things. At Christmas time, they helped with providing Christmas gifts. When you’re going through all this, you’re just thinking, ‘How can I just get my child better?? You don’t sit there and think about how you’re gonna afford the fun activities. It’s nice that they already have it set up.?
Donations to CLF also provide leukemia/lymphoma research funding annually to Michigan’s two NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers.
To learn more about CLF or Glitz hair salons, visit www.leukemiamichigan.org or www.glitzsalons.com.