Tampa Bay families to travel to Washington to rally for childhood cancer awareness

TAMPA, Fla. — This week, Tampa Bay area families will head to our nation’s capital to rally for childhood cancer research to be a national priority.

“There’s nothing harder to a bereaved parent than to think somebody’s going to forget their child, so we make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Christen Gray.

Gray knows the grief of losing a child that never truly goes away. In 2018, her son was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma.

“My first experience with CureFest, I traveled when our son relapsed in 2019,” said Gray. “The year following, I was there as a bereaved parent. Our son passed away in 2020.”

Gray is one of the families going with the 1Voice Foundation, a Tampa non-profit, getting ready to travel to CureFest in Washington D.C. this week, where advocates and families will come together to raise awareness for pediatric cancer.

“Until every outcome is a favorable one, I think we have so much more work to do,” said Dena Sherwood.

Sherwood is the founder of Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation, which organizes CureFest.

She says childhood cancer research should be a national priority.

“Our cry was always more than four, and today it’s about 8 percent, so it has doubled in the last 16 years, but again, it’s just not enough,” said Sherwood. “You know there’s a problem when parents have to raise the funds to save their children’s lives.”

It’s an important initiative for countless families to make sure all kids have the tools to fight.

“We need more funding so parents don’t have to wonder what it would be like to see their youngest child graduate, their youngest child have a wedding,” said Gray.