Staff, students, and families of Londonderry High School continued its tradition of cutting their hair for wig donations to those suffering with cancer on Friday morning, Jan. 5.
About 45 volunteers marched into the high school’s gymnasium to donate their hair in an annual event that has been going on since 2007.
LHS English teacher, Steve Juster, orchestrated the “Lancer Lengths – Day of Giving” event with the help of his team of volunteer students.
Juster began the event by saying that “Lancer Nation” has been running a hair donation campaign for 19-years and over 2,500 donors have taken to the floor of the gym to take part in it.
Kicking off the event, Kelsey Sweet sang the Madonna song “Angel,” followed by Rachel Hutchinson singing the national anthem.
Hutchinson was then joined by Isobel Pitts to sing the school’s fight song.
Juster gave a brief history of the event, saying the first year of the event was covered by “Good Morning America,” later, Pantene featured the school in a documentary. He added “Seventeen” magazine called LHS a school you might want to transfer to and one of the events was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Before getting started with stories of why some of the volunteers chose to donate, retired assistant principal, Art Psaledas, was introduced to present the “Art Psaledas Award” to LHS teacher, Ann MacLean, for her work establishing physical education interactive courses for those physically impaired and for coaching the Unified teams for many years.
Vice President and Chief Nurse for Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Emma Dann, spoke at the event and expressed her appreciation for the efforts of the “Angels” generosity.
Leading into the donation stories, the “Lancer Dancers” gave a touching performance.
A number of stories were shared about the hair donators, starting with Abbey Austen, who has donated in third, fifth, ninth grade and now as a junior at LHS.
Before the annual “3, 2, 1” hair cutting, Grace Nutter was called to the floor as the student who would call for the simultaneous hair cutting. Nutter was joined by her parents, where it was announced that both grandmothers had been going through cancer treatments, with one of them recently passing away.
The event ended with all 45 donors having their hair cut by family and friends.