Local Builder Raises $660K for St. Jude
BUILDING FOR A CAUSE
Left to Right : John Mowry, Meagan Mowry, Alison Rice, Ben Senger – WSAV, Helen Cardamone, Leslie Ehlers, Matt Harden, Richard Schwartz
The St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway is a 27-year tradi-tion that is one of the largest single-event fundraisers for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. To date, more than 450 homes have been given away and the program has raised more than $378 million to save the lives of children with cancer and other deadly diseases at St. Jude.
Unlike other hospitals, the majority of the funding for St. Jude comes from generous donors. The daily operat-ing cost of St. Jude is $2.2 million. Approximately 75% of the costs of St. Jude are covered by public contribu-tions through an incredible network of fundraising and outreach efforts.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other deadly diseases. St. Jude has the world’s best survival rates for the most aggressive child-hood cancers, and treatments invented at St.
Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to 80 percent since it opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude is working to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 90 percent in the next decade.
This year the 2018 St. Jude Dream home was built by Bluffton, S.C. based homebuilder, Village Park Homes, in The Commons community in Richmond Hill, GA.
Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago.
Village Park Homes, along with numerous local and national sponsors who generously donated their time, materials and talent, worked together to raise almost $660, 000 for pediatric cancer research. Leslie Ehlers, Marketing Director for Village Park Homes, says, “The construction of this year’s dream home would not be possible without the support of the community and the incredible generosity of local and national sponsors including Bosch, Brizo, Trane, Shaw Floors and the incredible interior design and staging services by the outstanding team at Timeless Interiors.
This year’s Dream Home was given away during a live drawing during the WSAV evening newscast on June 27th and the lucky winner is Becky Foster of Ludowici, GA.
She was driving to choir practice at Live Oak Church of God in Hinesville, where shes been every Wednesday night for the past 16 years, when she got a phone call.The person on the other end of the line asked to verify her name. Foster thought it was hoax. It wasn’t.
The Ludowici grandmother and long time music teacher at Diamond Elementary School received a call from St. Jude informing her she was the winner of the 2018 St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway. The expansive Norman plan is a two-story, 3800 sq. ft. home, featuring five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms with an estimated value of $400,000.
A widow and victim of Hurricane Irma, Foster, who leans heavily on her faith, purchased a ticket for the first time this year. Before the call, she never had seen the home or knew anything about it other than its location in Richmond Hill.
With over 23 years in teaching, Foster has experienced first hand the devastating effects of childhood cancer has on a family and a community. She’s thankful to God and to the efforts to support St. Jude for the blessing of the Dream Home campaign and the money raised to help a truly worthy cause.
