Braving a Shave for Pediatric Cancer Research

"Bald is beautiful" was the operative phrase at first-ever St. Baldrick's Day celebration on Wednesday. 

Doctors, staff and community residents ditched their vanity and lined up to get their heads sheared to raise money for pediatric cancer research and show support for children who lost their hair during cancer treatment.

The first St. Baldrick’s Day took place in 2000, when some insurance executives turned their regular St. Patrick’s Day party into a head-shaving event to help children with cancer, according to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation website. The executives had set out to raise $17,000 but instead raised $104,000.

Since then, the volunteer-driven St. Baldrick’s Foundation has funded more childhood cancer research grants than any other organization besides the U.S. government. St. Baldrick’s head-shaving events are held around the world in February and March.

Advocate Hope staff, family members and even patients ran clippers over doctors’ heads, shaping them into melons in exchange for pledges to be donated to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

Longer hair was to be donated to Locks of Love, an organization that makes and donates wigs to children who lose their hair during cancer treatment.

Christopher Conrady, a nurse practitioner  at Adovate Hope, said he was going to let his young patients take nips out of his thick hair stuffed inside a green St. Patrick’s hat throughout the night.

The shavees dropped their hair and raised over $30,000 on Wednesday, although there were yet to be any takers from participants to shave their eyebrows.