When ETSU student Kayla Griffith went home for Easter, her parents were shocked at her appearance. “My mom kept walking around me,” said Griffith, “and my dad just stared at me the whole weekend.”
No, there were no freaky piercings or strange tattoos. There were no signs of the ravages of exams and late nights. That wasn’t it at all.
Instead, Griffith had cut off nearly 11 inches of her signature shiny, brown hair and donated it to Angel Hair for Kids, an organization that provides wigs to children who lose their hair to cancer treatment.
“I guess I forgot to tell my parents what I was doing,” said Griffith, smiling.
The hair-cutting ceremony was part of the Relay for Life event to raise money for the American Cancer Society at the Mini-Dome on April 2.
For 12 hours, ETSU students, faculty and staff cheered, danced, and laughed their way through the night, eventually raising over $16,500 for cancer research – a figure that nearly tripled the amount raised last year, said event coordinator Lacie Tullock.
“It surpassed all our goals,” said Tullock, who helps organize the annual event through the Student Government Association, which was a primary sponsor for the ETSU Relay for Life.
“I had our goal set for $10,000, and the Johnson City branch of the American Cancer Society had our goal set for $15,000, so it was a really big kick-off for us,” said Tullock.
Tullock is quick to point out, however, that much of their success is owed to a team of 16 cancer survivors made up entirely of ETSU faculty and staff. Though it was the first time an ETSU survivor team participated in the event, they ended up raising over $6,300 for cancer research, said Tullock.
And they were happy to do it, said Kim Blevins, executive assistant to the dean of nursing and co-captain for Team ETSU. As a breast cancer survivor herself, Blevins said her favorite part of the event was just having the opportunity to be there and to celebrate with the friends who’d fought to be there, as well.
“The opportunity to bring our colleagues together as a team, each of us being bonded by having survived cancer, was probably the most touching part of the evening,” said Blevins. “And seeing all of us in a group for the team photo that evening truly brought tears to my eyes.”
But Blevins gave her greatest praise to the students who gave up their time – and in Griffith’s case, their hair – for the cause.
“In my eyes,” she said, “each student there represented the ‘best of the best’ and will be our service-oriented leaders of tomorrow. I believe these young people have already found that there is no greater joy in life than to give of yourself to help others.”
Did you hear that Mr. and Ms. Griffith?

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