Twelve teachers and Principal Jason Merz spent the night on the roof of Kramer School as the popular Kids Night Out activities were going on inside the school.
By the time staff members came down off the roof Saturday morning, the fundraising total had passed $8,000, bringing the total raised by the school to $12,724.01 since Kramer started the fundraiser in 2011
Staff members pitched tents on the roof and in the early evening hours sat around in lawn chairs or with their feet hanging over the main entrance to the school, laughing and joking with themselves and others who stopped by.
Speaking from the roof, Merz laughed and said, “Some were selected to come up. Some were elected to come up. Some had no choice.”
Families were taking part in the Kids Night Out inside the building and children were brought out in groups of 10 or 12 so the roof dwellers could toss candy and other fun things like small toys to thank the students for their contributions to the fundraising.
The initial trip to the roof was ceremonial, as the fire department came on the scene and let them use a fire truck ladder from the driveway area in front of the entrance.
“It was exciting. The kids were chanting each teacher’s name as they went up the ladder,” said Amy West Poley, the mother of Owen, the student who was found to have cancer just into his first-grade year at the school. Owen is now a fifth grader nearing the end of his years at Kramer and getting ready to move on to middle school.
She has been involved in the fundraiser each year in gratitude to the school staff for what they did to help her son complete his first-grade year on schedule, despite missing most of the year.
“They came to me and said they wanted to do something special because this is Owen’s last year in the school,” Poley said.
She explained that money was collected for three weeks and at the end of each week, they announced the names of the three teachers who were going up on the roof.
“The big goal was to get Mr. Merz on the roof,” she said with a laugh.
The Poley family moved to Oxford about nine years ago.
“We landed where the number one pediatric cancer hospital is. It was fortunate for us,” Poley said of being so near Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, adding her son was in treatment for two years and is healthy now.
It was a long journey for the Poley family from that day in September 2010 when Amy West Poley sat with a group of doctors from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in the ER and heard the news her 6-year-old, Owen, didn’t just have pneumonia, but most likely, he had cancer.
“I can remember stepping out of the room and tears streaming down my cheeks as I struggled to call my husband, Sean,” she remembers.
Instead of starting the first grade at Kramer, Owen was admitted to the intensive care unit, barely able to breathe. What followed was a two-year blur of days in and out of the hospital, she said. Doctors gave her and Sean a four-inch binder on how to navigate the three phases of Owen’s treatment.
It was two years of ups and downs, always living with the fear they could lose their son, she said.
“We’re just so glad that he’s here, and he’s doing what other kids do,” she said.
Owen missed most of the year in school, but teachers provided the work for him to do at home and tutored him there to get through the work and stay on schedule to advance the next year.
“He had to miss about a full year of school, but he never missed school. He was able to come back for the last few weeks (of first grade) and was able to move on to second grade,” Poley said. “The support from the Kramer community has been overwhelming. Owen could have been really, really behind.”
Her dream is to contribute to children’s cancer research, so that one day, other kids won’t have to go through what Owen did.
“We raised over $8,000 at this event thanks to the overwhelming generosity of this awesome community. The school community, its teachers, principal and the families have all surrounded us with such love and support since Owen’s diagnosis in 2010 and this latest event is further proof of just how awesome and caring this community is,” Poley said. “We feel so blessed.”
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