Category: When?

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Capping my THON coverage

With various stories about the event.

Hazleton Standard Speaker:: Dance of Love: Nittany Lion football players help make THON memorable for local youngster

A dozen kids and their families get a personal tour of the Penn State football facilities.

The Daily Collegian: Players grant wishes

Another article on the tours hosted by the football players.

Centre Daily Times: Cancer benefit kickoff, impact larger than life

More than 2000 students prep the Jordan Center for THON. A mother of one of the young cancer patients is quoted as saying – “When they’re with those Penn State students,” Sharon Otstott said, “you see these kids (become) normal kids again.”

CentreDaily.com: Students raise $5.2 million at Thon

Crowd estimated as 10,000 to 12,000 for Sunday’s afternoon wrapup.

The Daily Collegian: Thon breaks record by $1 million.

Tavern employee quoted in the article – Independent dancer Jen Shaffer (senior- kinesiology) wore an orange cape during Thon, which her moraler gave her so she’d be easy to spot on the crowded floor. “My moraler made it for me, and in her first shift, gave it to me as a surprise,” she said.

The Daily Collegian: Families enjoy each others’ company at Thon breakfast

On Sunday morning, organizers host a breakfast for all the families in attendance who have a child that has been helped by the Four Diamonds Fund. From the article – Catharine Scott, whose daughter Colleen was diagnosed with cancer when she was only 5, said without the Four Diamonds Fund, paying for Colleen’s treatment “probably would have bankrupted us.

The Daily Collegian: Former Thon kid relives her experience

As a teenager, Kern had the most common type of bone cancer among children, osteogenic sarcoma, in her right knee. She was a Four Diamonds child in 1992 and is now cancer-free. Still, someone from her family has returned to Thon each year for the past 15 years.

The Daily Collegian: Thon supporters trek 135 miles for the kids.

Runners brave brutal conditions to relay a backpack of letters from kids in the Four Diamonds Children’s Ward at Hershey Medical Center 135 miles to deliver them to dancers at the Dance Marathon. This was the first time they did this run and it worked so well that it’s apt to become an annual tradition now.

The Daily Collegian: Mail call delights, energizes dancers.


Mike “The Mailman” Herr danced around the Thon stage as members of the crowd cheered him on, creating a buzz that flooded through the Bryce Jordan Center early Saturday morning.

“You’ve got mail!” he screamed. “Lots of mail!” he added, eliciting cheers and whoops from the tired crowd at this weekend’s Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon.

Left: Dancer Kerri O’Rourke reads a letter she received during mail call.

StateCollege.com: Familes share experience, find support at Thon.

Article talks about three families and their battles with childhood cancer. One family talks about a special day the Four Diamond Fund hosts for siblings of cancer patients, oft times forgotten victims as the disease hits a family.

The Daily Collegian: Family Hour evokes emotion from all.

At 1PM on Sunday, families of the cancer victims and survivors take the stage to share their stories with the dancers. It is annually the most emotional moment of the event and serves to remind everyone why they are there.


The Daily Collegian: Athletes add excitement

Bears kicker Robbie Gould: “It’s awesome,” said former Nittany Lions kicker and current Chicago Bear Robbie Gould, who signed autographs and took pictures with the kids. “As an alum, this is important to me … it’s the reason you’re here, and it’s the reason you come back.”

The Daily Collegian: Kids work it on the stage

Thon children “worked it” Saturday morning as they strutted, tossed their hair and were treated like celebrities during the kids’ fashion show. The children wore brand new clothes that were donated to the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon by local merchants. Each child was allowed to keep the outfit he or she modeled.

FTK

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$5,240,385.17

Just got back from THON – the Penn State Dance Marathon charity and they hit a new record topping $5 million for the first time.

Julie Myers, who is quoted in the attached article, is a Tavern employee and the daughter of a Sonny Myers, friend of mine that worked with me at the Tavern in the 70s. Julie was one of five Tavern employees who danced in the event. Others were Lisa Scarborough, daughter of John “Doc” Scarborough, also a former Tavern waiter, friend, and onetime roommate of mine (1967-68 academic year); David Gray, Penn State soccer player, and son of Gary Gray whom I have mentioned on this blog several time; Jen Shaffer, a Facebook buddy of mine; and a fifth employee whom I don’t know.

I stopped in at THON at 2:30 AM last night to see the kids and I thought they were all doing remarkably well. For being the middle of the night they had quite a crowd there cheering the dancers on.

But that crowd paled when compared to the scene this afternoon. There had been some criticism about moving THON out of our cozy gym called Rec Hall. Over the last few years they had to stop letting people into Rec Hall on several occasions because it was filled to capacity (probably about 5000 or so). As a result, the event was moved to the Bryce Jordan Center with a capacity of about 16,000. There was a fear that the size of the Jordan Center would cause the event to lose it’s intimacy and everyone would seem lost in the arena. Those fears were unfounded as the BJC was pretty much packed and the event was hugely uplifting as usual.

Here’s a photo I took from the upper deck and you can see how the place was crammed with people.

The kids on the floor had been going for 44+ hours at this point. The kids in the stands are the spectators and various sponsoring sororities, fraternities, and other groups who have dancers on the floor. Typically the groups will have T-shirts made up to match their dancer(s) which is why the whole scene is so colorful. Here are two shots I took from opposite sides of the arena.


“JR and Natalie Band” were the last band to take the stage for the event. They went on at 2PM this afternoon. Here’s Nat acknowledging her biggest fan before she takes the stage.

In this one, taken from the back of the arena, if you look on the screens behind the band you can see one of the kids who decided to climb up on stage and dance with Natalie. He stayed up there most of the set and the crowd loved it. Mark, the lead guitarist, even had the kid strumming his guitar during one of the songs. The kid was having an absolute blast.

And here’s Ernest Hemingway with the rock star after her set was over.

Here’s a short video that I took from backstage with my photo camera showing the kids rocking to the band. I just wish I had some audio to go with it but it is an obsolete photo camera that’s considerably old technology – you know 4-5 years old.

One final thing that I want to show is another short video with my photo camera. This time the video starts out with the morale leaders on stage leading the dancers in the line dance that they do every hour. It then scans out over the actual dancers and the crowd and you can see how enthusiastic and pumped everyone is even though they are 46 hours into the marathon.

It’s quite an event and there’s really nothing even close to it when it comes to student fund raising. The kids can be immensely proud of themselves.

Many more stories if you are interested.

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Thank You Shannon

Friday afternoon, I was down at Tony’s Big Easy for their annual customer appreciation holiday party, when the owner, Tony Sapia, called me aside. He had an envelope in his hand and told me the following story.

He said

I got a phone call the other day and this girl asked me “Do you know Uncle Larry?” My response was “Sure, everybody knows Uncle Larry”. Her answer was “Well I’m his niece”. My answer to her was “Sure” and she replied “No really. My name is Shannon and I’m his REAL niece.”.

With that Tony handed me an envelope with a gift certificate in it and said “Merry Christmas from Shannon”.

So thank you very much Shannon and Merry Christmas in return.

I hope to hear from others what they received in the Secret Santa exchange.

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Happy Holidays!!

This is our Xmas card this year, but we’re so far behind I thought I’d put it up here. You will get the photo eventually, so don’t bother trying to print this one.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and if you’re not back to work yet, hope it stays great.

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I-Xmas!!

I-Xmas comes to The Legends of the Falls!!

Beginning Christmas Eve, after the kids go to bed (maybe late) link from the image below to spend some time with your NJ I-kin. Who knows, you might see Santa Claus!

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Santa Crawl 2006

We had our third annual State College Santa Crawl last Friday. I was so busy trying to keep the group organized that I didn’t get my normal quantity of photos so I had to wait a few days to collect photos from others on the tour before making this post.

We started at out normal spot – Hooters. Hooters is located on the east end of the College Avenue, the main drag in State College. For those who haven’t been to town College Ave is actually the divider between the town on the south side of the street and the University which is on the north side of the street. Most of the downtown bars are located on or between College Ave and Beaver Ave which runs parallel to College. We traditionally start at Hooters and “crawl” our way westward ending the evening at Cafe 210.

This map should give you an idea.

The bars that we hit on our route and their block number on the map are as follows:

Hooters – block #12
The Lions Den – block #9
Gingerbread Man aka G-Man – block #24
Adam’s Apple at the Tavern – block #5
Shandygaff – block #5
Bill Pickle’s – block #3
Allen Street Grill – block #3
Cafe 210 – block #2

Here’s a photo taken at Hooters as we started

and here’s one of the group onstage at the Cafe at 2:00 am.

I was particularly proud of how many managed to make it to the end. I usually lose control of the group as we cross Pugh Street (that would be between the Shandygaff and Bill Pickle’s) as people decide to branch off to other bars not on the planned itinerary.

We probably had upwards of 35 people participate at one time or another and seven people actually made it all the way through.

To see more photos of our crawl, try this link.

To see photos from past crawls, try the links at this page.

To see photos from SantaCon events worldwide, try this link or this link.

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More Thanksgiving




Not much more, really. Basically just some photos. Not enough time to compose an eloquent essay of our trip. We had a really great time. The kids did too. They seem to appreciate seeing family. (Maybe Shannon or Marilyn will tell about Lex’s spontaneous hug of Shannon.)

And we loved checking out Shan’s piece of America. Nice choice, Shan.

BTW, Sorry for the long loadtime on this post. The blog isn’t working correctly (making corrupt resized images) and I had to tweak the html manually to get these posted. If I have time I’ll fix it.