Hoover students surprise 7th grade leukemia patient with Disney trip
Students at Hoover High School today surprised a 13-year-old Bumpus Middle School student who is battling leukemia with a trip to Disney World to help add some joy to her difficult journey.
Lily Beam, a seventh-grader at Bumpus who was diagnosed with leukemia in September, has been undergoing treatment at Children’s Hospital, and the treatment is expected to take about three years, according to her parents, Jason and Courtney Beam.
Students at Hoover High School got busy and over the past month raised money to fund a Disney World trip organized by the Magic Moments organization.
The Peer Helpers, Student Government Association, senior class officers and junior class officers held coin drives, sold T-shirts for Be Kind Week, took other donations and organized spirit nights at Chick-fil-A, Taco Mama, MELT, Super Chix and The Whole Scoop, said Susan Norris, a peer helping teacher at the school.
The goal was to raise $5,000, but students exceeded that and collected $8,000, Norris said. The excess money will be given to Magic Moments to help fund a trip for another child battling a serious illness, she said.
The students surprised Lily with news about the trip in a limited assembly in the Hoover High competition gym. They got Lily there under the guise of her being one of several judges for a fun science experiment contest.
Each of the four groups that led the fundraising effort had a team that performed a science fair-type experiment along with a song-and-dance routine. After that was over, they called the four judges to the center of the gym and said they needed to blindfold them, but only Lily was actually blindfolded as family members joined her.
When the blindfold was removed, a giant banner was dropped, and students shouted that Lily was going to Disney World. She beamed with gratitude and said she was so grateful and knew that the high school students had to work hard to raise that much money for her to have a special trip.
She has been to Disney World before, but this time, she’ll get to stay at the Give Kids the World Resort, an 89-acre nonprofit “storybook” resort for kids with critical illnesses and their families.
Lily likely won’t take the trip until Christmas because she won’t finish her first round of treatment until this summer and will need some time to recover before making the journey, her parents said.
The Beam family is no stranger to critical illnesses. Lily’s brother, Tucker, died of leukemia at the age of 9 in 2009 after beating two other cancers, her parents said.
Emily Cuthbert, a member of the junior class officers, said she and her fellow students just wanted to do something to help Lily in her battle.
“We know we can work together as a team and get stuff done if we all have a goal in mind, and we just knew it was the right thing to do,” Cuthbert said.
Seeing Lily’s response to the trip was an emotional experience, Cuthbert said.
“I started tearing up. It was the sweetest thing,” she said. “Everything that went into it was so worth it. It was such a great experience for her.”
Lauren Wallace, a member of the senior class officers, said the group organizes a lot of things for the senior class, but doing something like this for someone else was so much more special.
“It was so awesome to see her,” Wallace said. “It was so exciting. We’re so happy to do it.”